ANUSTATE IVSER SILTY IIIIIIIIII I IIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII I- 31293 00888 3930 LIBRARY Michigan State UnIversIty This is to certify that the dissertation entitled THE NOVEL OF ENGLISH WORKING-CLASS MOVEMENTS, 1848-1914: GASKELL, DICKENS, HARKNESS, AND TRESSELL presented by Kathleen Ann Nesbitt has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Ph . D . degree in English [’76 ZZZ/:J //(:2 {/l/Z/{t24.__, Major professor Date/2% aZaéy /77/Z. MS U i: an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0-12771 ———___— -— ..— _, 7 7 , 7 _ ___ ._._ _. __ r__ u_. _ 777— PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record. TO AVOID FINES Mum on or before date due. DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE MSU Is An Affirmative ActIorVEquaI Opponunlty Inwtution omen“! THE NOVEL OF ENGLISH WORKING-CLASS MOVEMENTS, 1848-1914: GASKELL, DICKENS, HARKNESS, AND TRESSELL BY Kathleen Ann Nesbitt A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English 1992 07/4 {(5% ABSTRACT THE NOVEL OF ENGLISH WORKING-CLASS MOVEMENTS, 1848-1914: GASKELL, DICKENS, HARKNESS, AND TRESSELL BY Kathleen Ann Nesbitt The critical reception of Victorian and Edwardian "social problem novels" has tended to focus on those parts of the narrative which contain allusions to historical events. This emphasis is incomplete without considering how the economic system requires supporting ideologies, institu- tions, and formations to create conditions for the control of the means of production and to repress activities that may interfere with these conditions. Gaskell's nary Barton, Dickens’s garg_1img§, Harkness’s WM, and Tressell’s Messed IIgnfigzgg_£n11antnzgpi§t§ present class struggles as chal- lenges to the dominant social order. The complexity of these novelists' responses to Chartism, trade unionism, and socialism can be determined through Raymond Williams's theory of cultural materialism, an explanation of the speci- ficities of material culture and literary production within historical materialism. Williams's concepts of ideology, hegemony, institutions, and formations reveal that these novelists’ thinking about the efficacy of working class movements is either limited by their inability to transcend practical consciousness, or by an awareness of the capabili- ty of the capitalist system to absorb criticism and threats. This dissertation analyzes both the ideological conditions from which these responses originated, and the process by which the authors attempted to solve the cultural contradic- tions upon which they are based. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction "To make great riches and great poverty square with Christ's Gospels": A Pedagogy for the Oppressed in uaz1_hgrtgn Institutions and Reform in Earnings Feminism and the Problem of Political Consciousness in Late Victorian Socialism: Margaret Harkness’s QEQIQ§_E§§LEQDEL_E§DQ§I§I The Struggle for Hegemony in u e e h List of References ii Page Page Page Page Page Page 16 55 84 122 160 INTRODUCTION In the early 1980’s, I audited a seminar on speech act theory. The course was representative of the department's emphasis on stylistics--not rhetorical analysis, but rather the analysis of sentence structures, verb tense, and vocabu- lary.1 We were required to read Austin, Searle, and Pratt in order to be able to identify and categorize types of "utterances"--commands, performatives, expressives, etc.-- according to their linguistic properties. Speech act theory itself was not the subject of the course; rather, the empha- sis was on the application of the concepts to a Henry James novel--Ihe_fiwkygr§_5gg. Hours of class time were spent analyzing speech acts and determining their linguistic force in the context of the situations within the text. At the end of the term when we successfully constructed a "meaning" of the novel with our linguistic tools, I remember the general sense of satisfaction coming from the students in the class, and although I shared in the feeling, I was also conscious of a dissatisfaction with the literary theory that the institution expected me to practice, not just speech act theory but structuralism, stylistics, and "new criticism." 1See Jameson's "Criticism in History" 121-123 for a description of the two distinct kinds of "stylistics." 1 2 A year later in a different department, I took another seminar in literary theory. This time the topic was the "nee-historicism” of Adorno, Benjamin, Williams, and Jameson. The course emphasized historicism as a theory rather than a method, but the authors’ practices were clear enough for me to realize that I was probably as far from stylistics as I could get, and I liked where I was. What struck me--and renewed my interest in literary studies-~was that these writers refused to respect the traditional bound- aries of academic disciplines. For example, Williams's Th2 gguntry_and_the_gity is sociology, philosophy, literary criticism, and political theory. The result is a fascinat- ing critique of the myth of an organic English past. And yet I saw that the emphasis on language characterizing all literary studies is still important--indeed crucial--to the consideration of literature as a historically specific production. Later, with Jameson's principle "always historicize" in mind,2 I gave a report in a seminar on English Marxist literature that outlined a history of the labor movement and its connection to socialism. A month before the term paper was due, I began to wonder how I could bring that history to literature without producing a reductive content analysis. The problem remained with me for a while until as a result of further reading, I discovered that form is the final 2These are the first two words in the introduction to W. 3 articulation of the deeper logic of the content itself. I read, for instance, the following statements by Engels from the 1888 edition of the ggmmunist_uanifig§tg: The manifesto being our joint production, I con- sider myself bound to state the fundamental propo- sition which forms its nucleus, belongs to Marx:3 That proposition is: That in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization neces- sarily following from it, the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently the whole history of mankind . . . has been a history of class strug— gles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; that the history of these class struggles forms a series of evolutions in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class--the proletari- at--cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class--the bourgeoi- sie--without at the same time, and once and for all, emancipating society at large from all ex- ploitations, oppression, class distinctions, and 3Stedman-Jones reconsiders Engels's contribution to historical materialism in "Engels and the Genesis of Marx- ism,” which argues Engels was being modest when he made this assertion. 4 class struggles. (6) It followed, then, that literature is a history of class struggles as well as a social product that loses its meaning when cut away from its economic context. Content analysis has an interpretative value, I found, but it is incomplete without considering how the economic system requires sup- porting ideologies, institutions and formations to create conditions for the control of the means of production and to repress activities that may interfere with these conditions. These activities, of course, are those engaged in by the working class, which at the beginning and end of the nineteenth century posed real challenges to the hegemonic process as the workers began to be conscious of themselves as a class. Chartism, trade unionism, and socialism were movements in which the working class acted in its own inter- ests and thereby produced its own history. The novels with which this study is concerned were written either during the rocky assimilation of the industrial revolution in the 1840's and 1850’s, or the early 1900's when socialist ideas began to permeate labor movements. Between the radical I unionism in fiazg_Iimg§ and the fully-realized socialist vision in Ihe_Bag9ed_Irousered_£nilanthroei§t§. there is a gap of over fifty years. Nevertheless, as E. P. Thompson C) has pointed out, "Each historical event is unique, but many events, widely separated in time and place, reveal, when brought into relation with each other, regularities of process” (Egygrty_gfi_Thegry 84). It is not surprising, 5 then, that the intense socialist agitation at the end of the century prompted one reporter to warn his readers that Chartism was being revived.‘ History as process, background, and determining princi- ple in four novels that exploit historical events to argue for social reforms or social revolution is used in this work as the framework to interpret four novelists’ confrontation with a maturing working class consciousness. These authors- -Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Margaret Harkness, and Robert Tressell--all represent real historical limits to Marx and Engels’s socialist vision, either because they were not able to transcend the limitations of their own practical consciousness, or because they perceived (and wrote about) the capability of the capitalist system to adapt to criti- cism and threats, particularly those which emanated from labor movements and socialist ideas. As everyone knows, England was the first country to meet all of the requirements for a socialist revolution: the industrial revolution began there; a proletariat was creat- ed: Marx and Engels worked in and disseminated their ideas from London: there was sporadic and sometimes violent work- ing class unrest. Yet there was no revolution. The reason most often cited for this is the ability of English culture to accommodate change and mitigate conflict.S If this were ‘See Beer II: 323. 58ee Halevy I: 387. 6 true, then it would follow, in Marxist terms, that there were fundamental changes in the control of the means of production and the distribution of surplus value. In late nineteenth and early twentieth-century England, however, there was no fundamental economic change. Yet while capi- talism strengthened and became entrenched, there evolved an equally powerful critique of it from Owen, Marx, Engels, Morris, and others who, to put it simply, perceived that the system of values existing in the culture reflected the values of the controlling class, and that these values corresponded to the existing economic system. As Thompson observes of this historical period, the ideology of supply and demand, sought exactly to impose this structure upon the working class, and, at the same time, to convince them that they were powerless to resist these "immutable laws"; and much of the history of the British, in these decades, can only be understood as a heroic (even "Moralistic") refusal to be supports of the reasons and necessities of capi- tal. (147) Yet the politics, society, philosophy, and religion of bourgeois culture seemed more adept at incorporation rather than conciliation. This conclusion is based on the readings of the novels in this work—-readings informed by Raymond Williams’s cultural theory, specifically his redefinition of hegemony, discussion of institutions and formations, analy- 7 sis of the dominant, residual, and emergent, and especially his careful reconsideration of ideology as a cultural con- cept. Mg:xism__ang_Literatnre (1978) contains discussions and analyses of Marxist uses of these concepts as well as their ”location within a more general development" (5). Each concept is explained in terms of its historically shifting meanings, its frequent misapplication in various types of Marxisms, and its relationship to a complex cul- ture. The three sections of Marxism_and_Literatuze--”Basic Concepts," ”Cultural Theory," and "Literary Theory”--combine to create what Williams calls cultural materialism, ”a theory of the specificities of material culture and literary production within historical materialism" (5). The concepts within the sections are all on which, Williams argues, "Marxist literary theory seems to me in practice to depend" (5). For example, "ideology" has three dominant uses and meanings in Marxist theory. It is used to mean the belief system of a particular class: it can refer to a system of "illusory beliefs," or "false consciousness": and it can mean "the general process of the production of meanings and ideas" (55). Williams explains the limitation of the first two meanings and based on the third, proposes a radical redefinition of ideology, one which emphasizes "significa- tion as a central social process" (70). The Marxist tradi- tion, according to Williams, is "limited and frequently distorted by failures to see that the fundamental processes 8 of social signification are intrinsic to ’practical conscio- usness’ and intrinsic also to the ’conceptions, thoughts, and ideas’ which are recognizable as its products" (70). Herein lies the originality of Williams’s formulation: he perceives ideology as consciousness-in-practice as signs are exchanged and become identifiable formations. When ”ideolo- gy” as this type of process is realized, Williams observes, its "products" also include "art and literature" (71). The concept of ideology in Williams’s sense is the operative strategy in this study. Each chapter places the novel in a specific ideological context, discusses how the ideology is historically determined, and notes how the novel’s form contributes to the process of social signification. Howev- er, unlike Williams in Marxi§m_gnd_Litgzature, I admit the validity of class struggle as a progressive principle in history. Some of the novels analyzed here, particularly Gaskell’s and Dickens’s, have been referred to as "social problem novels" or simply "social novels." Much critical attention has focused on reading them as social facts, which usually involves locating the parts of the narratives which contain allusions to social issues.6 ‘Yet, as historian Gertrude Himmelfarb has observed, the "social message” of novels may lie "in ideas and attitudes communicated less overtly" (1Qea_91_£gyg;ty 407). Thus, for example, one can 6For representative examples of these readings, see Ganz, Bratlinger, Collins, and Gilmour. 9 read fl§:§_11me§ in the context of historical accounts of the Preston Strike--including Dickens’s own--but we get a fuller understanding of his attitudes toward trade unionism if we also look at the language and scenes which do not seem to be intentionally didactic about the utilitarian ideology he critiques. In chapter one, when I read Gaskell’s Ma;y_§gz§gn as an argument for a specific type of education for the working classes, I am, in a sense, "unmasking" the ideological process of the text. In the context of the debate over educating the working class that was developing at the time Gaskell wrote the novel, it becomes clear that she is par- ticipating in the "exchange of signs," and at the same time reproducing some of the more reactionary responses to Chart- ism and trade unionism. Critics have praised her sincerity, her genuine sympathy for the condition of the working class, but the concern is limited by her inability to understand the conditions from which potential revolutionary--or more precisely, pre-revolutionary--working class movements arose. This shortcoming can also be detected in the novel’s form: Gaskell cannot settle on a narrative mode to adequately represent the experience of the working class, and thus the novel fails as an instrument of pedagogical reform. The education for which she argues is based on F.D. Maurice’s ideas of teaching political economy along with Christian values to the working class. Her novel disseminates these ideas by frequently using direct address, or what one critic 10 has called ”earnest interventions,"7 to convince her middle class readers to take responsibility for the workers’ condi- tion by supporting Maurice’s ideas. The "process of social signification’" then, is essential to her project of produc- ing values for her philanthropy-minded readers to share. In ugzy_fig:§gn, education becomes an ideology that seeks to incorporate workers into a rapidly maturing industrial so- ciety and thereby attempts to weaken Chartism and unionism. Dickens is ambivalent about the value of unions, for while he detected in them elements of the more extreme aspects of utilitarianism, he admired the workers’ solidari- ty in a society that rewards self-interest. This ambiva- lence is, I believe, indicative of a shrewd understanding of his society which, by the time he began writing flard_11me§ in 1854, had just reached its peak economically and politically.8 Chapter two locates this understanding by discussing the novel as a critique of the institutionaliza- tion of utilitarianism, particularly in schools, but also to a lesser extent in churches, the work place, and trade unions. More overtly than in Gaskell’s novel, educational reform is Hard_11me§’ theme, but unlike Gaskell, Dickens is very aware of the harm the reforming impulse can cause. Institutions, Williams points out, have a "profound 7See Warhol’s "Toward a Theory of the Engaging Narra- tor." 8See Checkland 115-159 for a social, economic, and political analysis of this period in Victorian history. 11 influence on the active social process" (Marx;§m_§ng Literature 117). Williams makes a distinction between the concept of socialization in orthodox sociology as "a universal abstract process," and as a process that ties learning to concrete and selective meanings, values, and practices (Marxi§m_and_Literature 117). All of these “constitute the real foundations of the hegemonic" (117). For a hegemony to be functional, there must be self- identification with these values. However, as Dickens saw, there is conflict when the selection of values is so narrow that an effective incor- poration is impossible. He perceived that early industrial society required a greater variation of guiding principles than those sanctioned by utilitarianism. Specifically, he argued for "Fancy," both as an imaginative reprieve from industrialization, and as a form of instruction through the kinds of moral guidance offered in fairy tales and fables. Wings has been called a moral fable9 and can be read as an attempt to assuage the breakdown of the "communicabi- lity of experience" that Walter Benjamin claims for the fairy tale.10 Yet there are serious limitations to Dickens’s solution, and it is another indication of powers of perception that he realized "Fancy" was not enough to curtail the problems of industrialization. 9See Leavis for appreciation of the novel as a moral fable. 10See his essay, "The Storyteller." 12 The dissemination of socialist ideas in English culture later in the century provided novelist Margaret Harkness with a strong alternative to the hegemony. The recuperation of her novel about the Great Dock Strike of 1889 in the East End constitutes an important addition to novels of working class movements. Harkness is one of hundreds of female novelists whose work has been out of print for nearly a century.11 Very little is known about this remarkable woman, but we do know that she was involved in the Dock Strike, the Social Democratic Federation, and the first wave of feminism in Britain. Her novel gegtge_fia§tmgnt;_flandgzgt is concerned with the formation of a revolutionary con- sciousness in an aristocrat who aligns himself with the working class and the London socialists. The protagonist represents the confusion of ideas which during the 1880’s plagued English socialism. The SDF, for example, officially distanced itself from unionism, preferring to expend its resources on "real revolutionary activity" rather than on reform. However, some of the more active members of the Federation, including John Burns and Tom Mann, left the SDF to concentrate on the unionization of unskilled labor. Harkness herself worked with them, but she seemed to have doubts about both the sincerity of a movement championing economic equality while entrenched in misogynistic 11A forthcoming publication represents one of many attempts to recover the work of some of these writers: Eorg2tten_Eomen_£olitigal_ngxeli§t§ Chapel Hill: North Carolina UP, 1992. 13 attitudes, and the efficacy of unionism which historically tended to create hierarchies. In part, the novel can be read as an attempt to provide the preconditions for gender equity within the socialist movement. Moreover, self-con- scious about her middle-class origins, she suspected the work of non-working class leaders in the socialist organiza— tions. Harkness had a sense of what the intellectual could learn from men and women of practical experience, so she mistrusted those who were too eager to throw their lot in with the workers. Although she was clearly caught up in the strike of unskilled workers, Harkness was apprehensive about its effectiveness against a mature capitalist hegemony. Still, Qegrge_Eastmonti_Wanderer constitutes a break from the naturalism of her previous novels, for she believes the working-class solidarity of the Dock Strike proves that the world is not merely natural but also historical, and there- fore under the right conditions it is subject to radical change. Robert Tressell, England’s first great working-class novelist, represents the mature working-class consciousness in action. W is a fully realized argument for the inevitability of socialism. It is a cultural analysis of capitalism that develops by confront- ing popular myths about socialism which were reinforced, in part, by the "new economics," an attempt by Alfred Marshall to soften some of the more value-free premises of Adam Smith. Tressell juxtaposes socialism with the hegemonic 14 process of dominance and subordination, exposing the incon- gruities of capitalism in order to create an alternative, independent hegemony. He uses irony as a potent weapon of exposure by rendering capitalism as a ridiculous, ”carnival- esque' system of self-interested exchange value. In this chapter, Williams’s redefinition of hegemony helps to ex- plain how WW works- Williams stresses that a "lived hegemony is always a process . . . a realized complex of experiences, relationships, and activities, with specific and changing pressures and limits’ (112). Changes within the hegemonic, for instance, are necessary to control, transform, or even incorporate opposi- tion to it. While Tressell demonstrates the power of the dominant to overwhelm challenges to it, his belief in the historical inevitability of socialism keeps him from de- spair. The form of the novel is itself an experiment against hegemonic forms. Its discontinuity and heavy irony allows its proletarian audience to read the novel in sec- tions that provide occasions for focused discussion and debate. The irony requires readers to participate in Tressell’s critique of capitalism. Taken as a whole, the novel’s form is a confrontation with its readers’ reified (commodified) consciousness, for "only when capitalism itself reveals its full contradictions will people begin to understand why and how it is to be overthrown" (Jones, "Class Struggle" 45). In any age the thought which counts is that thought 15 which bears a close relationship to the problems of an age, Marx believed. Whether these novelists regarded working class movements as reasons to reform an already fragile hegemony attempting to assimilate industrialism, or as indications of a developing revolutionary proletariat, their thinking about class struggles attests to the significance of working class movements as history-making events. "To make great riches and great poverty square with Christ’s Gospel": A Pedagogy for the Oppressed in ua:y_fiattgn As middle class Victorian society struggled to assimi- late the Industrial Revolution in the 1830’s and 1840’s, it searched for a set of values that would create a moral order it believed would be appropriate to an industrial society. This search led the middle class to envision education for the working classes as a way to deal with the problem of what to do for those becoming restless under the pressures of industrialism. In 1845 when Elizabeth Gaskell began to write Mgzy_flgttgn, Parliament was in the process of revising an education scheme that would accommodate both Church of England and Nonconformist demands. The compromise was not approved by the two religious factions until 1847, which marked the end of a complex stage in one of the most sus- tained political and religious debates of the century.12 The debate centered on two issues: who would be responsible for educating the working classes, and what they should be taught. The first issue caused much political maneuvering on the part of both religious interests. Since Parliament first made grant money available for the education of the working classes in 1833, the National Society for Promoting 1ZJ.L. and Barbara Hammond’s e A e 168-216, gives a complete account of the education contro- versy, beginning with the Reformed Parliament of 1833. 16 17 the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Estab- lished Church was awarded the bulk of it, whereas the Non- conformist British and Foreign School Society’s interests received secondary consideration (Hammond and Hammond 187- 189). In addition to the grant money, the British and Foreign School Society wanted more control over school inspections and teacher education. The National Society, however, was reluctant to give up any of its power to the Dissenters. In 1839 Lord John Russell worked out a compro- mise on these issues, but it was seven years before further modifications were completed to satisfy the Nonconformists (Hammond and Hammond 184). The middle class was loathe to realize that laissez faire was ineffective when dealing with social problems since the conditions of the industrial poor were left to the fluctuations of the market place, yet even with state assistance, however minimal, other, more power- ful, ideologies took over the education question to prevent adequate reform. The prolonged struggle for control of working class education became an opportunity for many middle class Vic- torian writers and intellectuals to participate in the debate over the second issue: what should the schools teach the working classes? The content argument centered on how much religion, if any, should be required, and if it were, how the Bible should be used in the curriculum. The Nation- al Society, as its name suggests, wanted established Church commentary on Scriptural meaning to accompany Bible 18 instruction. Perhaps the most intellectually engaged Church advocate in the education question at this time was Frederick Denison Maurice. Two convictions influenced Maurice on the question of national education: he believed the Church was by its nature an educator, by its functions the natural national educator; and education should not be divided into religious and secular parts (Brose 169). The British and Foreign Society resisted these beliefs by claiming religious freedom. It argued that while the Bible was necessary for the education of the working classes, no interpretation of it should be enforced, no doctrine of any sect should influence its teaching (Hammond and Hammond 180). There were also a number of individuals who believed working class education should be free of any religious instruction: instead, the state should assume sole responsibility for educating the poor. In 1843 J.A. Roebuck urged Parliament to distance itself from religious interests by abstaining from religious teaching, and in 1846 Dr. Hook, Vicar of Leeds, proposed that each denomination be responsible for religious education on Sundays, with the State providing secular education during the week (Hammond and Hammond 202). In general, though, many in the middle class agreed the working classes should learn religion. It was the debate on these issues that brought working class education to public attention, for it gave rise to a variety of proposals on how to educate the increasingly restless and demanding working classes. 19 It is well known the middle class saw education as the great panacea for working class unrest. Chartism had been able to bring together a number of working class discontents with its political agenda. Trades unionists, Owenite so- cialists, those involved in the co-operative movement, those who supported the Ten Hours Bill, and those, especially in the Industrial North who keenly felt the effects of the economic depression in the "hungry forties," all saw the possibilities of social reform through political action (Read 38-39). The enfranchisement of the working classes would mean they would control England. Because the debate on the education question was largely a middle class affair, there is little information on how the working classes responded to it. One significant point of view, however, came from the Chartist leader Feargus O’Connor who saw "the hungry and aspiring hordes of Dissenters yelling and clamor- ing against Mother Church" while "seeking to occupy her place."” O’Connor’s support of the Church is not as sur- prising as it may seem. As an appendage of the state, the Church could be a powerful ally to Chartism. Yet O’Connor’s support did little to strengthen the Church’s cause, and it seems it did not matter to him that, historically, the Church was associated with domination, tradition, and the status quo. The middle class response to Chartism was to a ”ngtthe;n_§t§; 6 May 1843. Quoted by Hammond and Hammond 200. 20 significant degree a red herring. By answering Chartist demands by saying the poor would be better off seeking an education rather than the vote, few were able to give convincing reasons. The relationship between education and the franchise was rarely stated, although historically education for the working classes was meant to improve labour efficiency, and religion to calm the "seething masses." Sir B. Heywood, in an address delivered to the Manchester Mechanics’ Institution in 1843, said that if the working classes desired to raise their condition, they must do it by exerting them- selves for their "own moral and intellectual development. Instead of seeking, in the first instance, an extension of their political privileges from the legislature, let them seek a system of rational and liberal education for themselves and their children."“ In a similar vein, the editor of the Manghegtez_§gazdian, J.E. Taylor, declared, "Let the people have a good education, and with the habits it would induce, the bribe of the intoxicating draught would be less powerful. Tell them the elective franchise cannot with safety be extended."15 What is absent from these views, as well as many others, are the circumstances under which the working classes could, “Sir B- Heywood. W C ’ ' (1843), 121. Qtd. by Donald Read, "Chartism in Manchester," 39 in Qngtti§t_§ttg1g§, edited by Asa Briggs. 39. 21 without further sacrifices, be educated. The reality of material conditions, long hours of labor, and the pervasive working class distrust of religious institutions, were problems few were taking into consideration while debating the education question. Still, there were some within the middle class who were aware of these barriers and offered ways to overcome them. Among these F.D. Maurice again stands apart. Education was Maurice’s great theme throughout his life, but particularly in the 30’s and 40’s he tried to join together ecclesias- tical and social questions into a theology of education whereby both Church and state co-operated for the common good. While he believed education to be the primary work of the Church, he also saw that the duty of the state was to give it "free scope to educate the people."“ All of his thinking on the education question is based on his belief that the state is as much God’s creation as the Church, and that it is necessary for both to be united in order to return to an ”original," undistorted type of relationship of family, society, nation, and universal church. On the issue of secular versus religious education, then, Maurice did not consider the two as distinct. As the editor of Eduggtigna1_nagazine, Maurice wrote that a man’s circumstances always acted upon him, belonged to him, and were in the strictest word secular. Yet insofar as he was “W. viii. Qtd. by Frank Moudlin Mcclain in W 88- 22 imbedded in his circumstances, he ceased to be a man; so far as he was distinct from them and rose above them, he entered into the privileges and responsibilities of a man: "Unless man be connected, and understand his connection, with an absolute Being, he cannot rise above his circumstances, and be a distinct living person.”"' Maurice believed the Church could serve as the one institution able to cut through all social divisions and heal deep class divisions. In 1838 Maurice gave lectures on education entitled figs 9: !__ 1 . - a - t_T '-.e to no c..- 1e 1 . ? In these lectures he argued that the result of the previous thirty years in educating "the lower classes" tended to divide the classes of society. He said the prevailing "sense of the word egttatign meant only a parcelling out of knowledge on a multitude of subjects, with the assumption that the business of life was to acquire information about mathematics and the sciences" (Brose 170). He claimed that this type of education set up barriers, for not all classes had sufficient leisure to receive all this information, and even if they had, distinctions in power of acquisition would ultimately lead to an intellectual hierarchy. On the other hand, a Christian education united all classes, with a sense of men’s common humanity. Christian education made "the "W. Oct. 1839. "Religious and Secular Education: A Letter to a Member of the House of Commons, from One of His Constituents." Qtd. by Olive J. Brose in -.- , 0e ,:o; .. <° '---1 ,o e '1 Dan's 169-170. 23 stupendous information which is the foundation of it, the same to all."“ Unlike many theological arguments surrounding the edu- cation debate, Maurice was able to see that education was needed for the middle class as much as for the working classes. He protested against the phrase "education for the poor," for if the argument against Chartism and for educa- tion rested on the premise that uneducated and undisciplined minds were not fit to exercise government, it does not necessarily follow that those who do run it are educated and disciplined ("Is There Any Hope For Education in England?" 193-194). This kind of close questioning was a frequent device in Maurice’s writings, and is also a technique Gaskell herself uses in Maty_gaztgn. Maurice’s thinking through of the theology of education made him well-known. His pamphlets, lectures, and editor- ship of Egtggtigna1_uag§t;ne brought his ideas to the public in many forms. As a resident of Manchester and the wife of a Unitarian minister, Elizabeth Gaskell had first-hand knowledge of the conditions of the industrial poor and believed, like many of her class and religion, that education for the working classes was necessary before class divisions could be healed. Throughout her adult life she ran a Sunday school where all denominations were wel- come. It is very likely that Gaskell was familiar with ‘mQtd. by Brose 171. 24 Maurice’s ideas on education. In the late 40’s and early 50’s Gaskell’s letters show that she was distressed over Maurice’s dismissal from King’s College, London, in 1853 (Lettgtg 606), but there is some evidence that she had known about him before that time. Historically, Unitarians sus- tained close ties with the established Church (Wilbur 361). A significant portion of Unitarians believed that provided a "sincere religion of the heart" were present, all doctrines taught more or less the same values (Wilbur 368). Further- more, Maurice himself was raised an Unitarian. As a small sect, it was not difficult for Unitarians to maintain a sense of community among themselves, even if geography often kept them apart. But the most compelling evidence that Gaskell not only knew but agreed with much of Maurice’s educational theology is found in Maty_figttgn, composed from 1845-1847, an intense period in the debate on education for the working classes. From Mazy_flaztgn it is clear that like Maurice, Gaskell herself did not separate education from theology. In the Ezgtage to the novel she wrote: . . . the belief of the injustice and unkindness which they [the factory workers] endure from their fellow-creatures, taints what might be resignation to God’s will, and turns it to revenge in too many of the poor, uneducated factory workers of Man- chester. The premises of this passage are somewhat embedded, but a 25 cause and effect relationship is established. The factory workers ”believe” they are treated unjustly: such a belief taints their resignation to "God’s will." Thus they must be educated in the ways of "God’s will" so that they can learn resignation. The passage also established the narrator’s role in the novel. The narrator in Maty_gaztgn is a media- tor between the two classes, as she attempts to overcome the separation of the ideological and the political, the reli- gious and the economic, to appeal to some underlying unity of the various levels of society. The narrator’s ideologi- cal premises are similar to Maurice’s, for both believed the working classes sorely required a grounding in theology, and it was the duty of the middle class to recognize the bond of brotherhood it shared with the working classes. Therefore the narrator makes a dual narrative gesture: she is both teacher and mediator. The frequent direct address and authorial intervention in the narration encourages Gaskell’s middle class readers to see themselves in the second person pronouns.19 They are invitations for her audience to participate in the narrative in order to take active responsibility for the conditions represented in the novel. Like Maurice, then, Gaskell saw that the debate on working class education was narrow in its focus: education was necessary to the middle ‘”See Robyn Warhol’s "Toward a Theory of the Engaging Narrator: Earnest Interventions in Gaskell, Stowe, and Eliot," EMLA 101 (1986):811-818. 26 class because it was responsible for instructing the working classes. Also like Maurice, Gaskell believed in the value of an education whereby the secular and the religious were not necessarily distinct. When united, she posits, the two have a synergy capable of creating an organicism that can be adapted to an industrial society. Separately, she argues, the secular and religious are the very causes of the prob- lems they are attempting to solve. Like Maurice, Gaskell believed that the organic nature of agrarian society could be adapted to an emergent indus- trial society. The co-operation of Church and state on the education question would, she argues in Mgty_Battgn, bring about the reconciliation of the spiritual with the material and create a "new" set of values based on a traditional relationship of family, state, and universal Church. Educa- tion that is entirely secular, she argues, threatens the family. Furthermore, a religious education that is based on misguided theological learning is dangerous to the state. Therefore, she posits that in order for an organic indus- trial society to emerge, secular learning must be mediated by theological understanding. Gaskell argues these premises through the characters in the novel who are, to a signifi- cant degree, ideologues that mimic an idea system dominant in early Victorian society. Mary Barton, John Barton, Job Leigh, and Henry Carson each represent ideologies that Gaskell often feels are inadequate in terms of the values they enforce. As will become clear, however, the narrator’s 27 attempt to transcend ideological differences through a theory of education based on Christian brotherhood remains locked in the terms of its hierarchical nature. Education in ”God’s will”--whether promoting self-help, resignation, or brotherhood--is a strategy of containment. Like many of her class, Gaskell believed the franchise for the working classes was dangerous without education, yet the type of education Gaskell privileges reveals that her desire for co-operation and unity are harnessed to ideological ends. Furthermore, in the narrative attempt to reconcile the material with the spiritual through ngty_§attgn’s content, Gaskell also confronts a crisis in form. She fails to find a mode of expression that adequately represents the organic society she envisions. While searching for a narrative mode to reconcile her bourgeois reactionary ideology with her progressive consciousness of working class experience, the eclectic form of Ma;y_§attgn unmasks an ideological mirage. In a novel that claims to give voice to the working classes, it is significant that the plot centers on domestic scenes rather than scenes depicting the characters at work. One possible reason for this is that the story is set during a time of high unemployment in Manchester: yet it also gives Gaskell a framework in which to argue that secular education unmediated by theology is detrimental to the family. The novel’s domestic emphasis is an attempt to stop emerging secular society. Originally, Gaskell had wanted to entitle the novel J9hn_fiaztgn; in a letter she wrote, "Round the 28 character of John Barton all the others formed themselves" (Lettgzs 74). But Barton is notably absent from the second half of the text as his radical experiences become margina- lized and the domestic situation takes over. At the urging of her editor Gaskell changed the title to emphasize the domestic element in the novel whereby Mary struggles to keep her present and future family intact by acquiring an alibi for Jem Wilson, the accused murderer of the mill owner’s son, Harry Carson, while protecting the actual murderer, her father. The arrest and trial of Jem Wilson is rooted in Mary’s consumption of romance novels and the values she learned from her Aunt Esther (who becomes a prostitute after unsuccessfully trying to marry outside of her class). In the early chapters we learn that before Esther’s mysterious disappearance, she said to Mary, "‘Mary, . . . what should you think if I sent for you some day and made a lady of you!’" (7). These words, along with the value Mary has learned to put on her beauty, lead Mary to believe that she would one day be Harry Carson’s wife. Mary’s "education" clearly does not sit well with either the narrator or John Barton. Both believe the "non- sense" Esther has put into Mary’s head, while perhaps natu- ral for all sixteen year old girls, goes against the Bible which says bread should be earned by the sweat of the brow (8). The narrator mediates Barton’s stern attitude by somewhat excusing Mary’s misguided dreams by claiming they are not uncommon to all girls of her age. Indeed, the 29 narrator has a somewhat maternal attitude toward Mary throughout the novel as she reveals an empathy with her while at the same time gently pointing out the errors in her reasoning. Mary’s subsequent apprenticeship with a dress- maker only encourages her dreams, though, for she and the other girls exchange romance stories and long for the social position of those they serve. Harry Carson himself is attracted to Mary’s keen shrewdness, ”which contrasted . . . with the simple, foolish unworldly ideas she had picked up from the romances" which Mary’s friends recom- mended to each other (91). Harry’s outlook is more realis- tic than Mary’s: unlike Mary he can see through the fiction. Harry is not the romantic hero Mary perceives him as being: in fact, after Mary rejects him, he threatens to rape her (204). In one of Mary’s key fantasies of being married to Harry Carson, she sees the two of them riding to church in a carriage. This is an opportunity for a mild rebuke from the narrator who points out that such "castles in the air" had their price, that Mary was ’doomed" to pay for them with ”many tears" (92). But perhaps the narrator’s most forceful condemnation of Mary’s behavior is when it becomes clear that Mary is not in love with Harry Carson. Mary’s overwhelming desire to make her fantasies fit reality causes her to justify her ambitions by believing that as Carson’s wife, she could provide for her father’s material comfort (92). She has failed to notice, however, that Barton is not concerned with 30 his own comfort, but that of his class. Mary’s mistaken notions stem not only from trying to force the values she learned from romance fiction to fit her world, but also from her own ignorance of the entrenched class boundaries her marriage to Carson would violate. Such ignorance was her Aunt Esther’s fate. Both assumed their own freedom to make a marriage agreement outside of their class extended to the bourgeoisie. While among the oppressed classes freely contracted marriages were the rule, among the bourgeoisie marriage remained class bound (Engels, Origin 72). Mary’s and Esther’s dreams are specifically related to their pover- ty, ignorance, and class situation. Carson never thinks of marriage to Mary until she ends their flirtation. He has known all along that marriage to her would mean alienation from his family and class (159-160). But Mary has decided she loves Jem: she has (somewhat abruptly) chosen to marry within her class. The ironies of the situation are manifold. Mary’s "castles in the air" become, for a moment, real, but after she herself has dismissed them. Carson’s reluctant yet at the same time desperate attempt to "have" Mary fails because he is not free to make a marriage con- tract outside of his class. Despite what she learned from romance novels, Mary’s right to free choice does not extend to Carson. Her inadequate secular education keeps her from perceiving the material realities of her society. Gaskell implies that some secular knowledge is necessary to a per- ception of "reality," but that knowledge needs to encourage 31 "common sense." The narrator values common sense in Mary’s counterpart, Margaret, the blind girl who be-friends Mary and is an example to her of patient suffering and of acqui- esescence to God’s will (46). The material considerations influencing Mary’s dreams imply there is little justification for a marriage not grounded in "free will." Mary’s education is based on fiction reading and thus void of any social understanding relevant to her actual society. Therefore Gaskell has Mary spending much of the second half of the novel not only unlearning the mistaken assumptions she has made, but also learning to see the world as it "really" is (Gallagher 77). Such a vision, however, is too much for Mary: only when she learns that the values of endurance and duty can serve as a buffer between her and the world does she reach a kind of truce with her past and her present. What Mary learns is the patience she requires to endure suffering. When she returns to her father, having recovered from a severe ill- .ness after Jem’s acquittal, she resolves not to allow "the scenes her fancy conjured up" at the memory of her father’s "savage" ways to overcome her, but instead to become a reformed magdalene, to "pour oil and balm into the bitter wounds" (145). Mary’s experience represents a danger to society itself, Gaskell argues, for a misguided secular learning threatens the family--the middle class family as well as the working class--and thus makes an organic rela- tionship between the family, society, and the state 32 impossible. Harry Carson is hardly a character to evoke reader sympathy, but even his actions are reduced to a mere money relation, and this is what Gaskell criticizes. Yet at the same time Gaskell reinforces the bourgeois taboo of marriage outside of one’s social class. Mary cannot escape the limits of her class through marriage, Gaskell argues, but she can improve her situation within her own class through an adherence to religious values. Gaskell argues that an even greater threat to both the family and the state is an inadequate theological education, for unless the working classes learn to see the values of reconciliation the Gospel teaches, they will reject religion and oppose the state. This is precisely John Barton’s experience when he comes to the conclusion that the middle class’s religion is a "humbug" because its actions do not "square with the Bible" (8). Barton’s attitude was common among the working classes at the time of the education debate, and it is an issue that Gaskell had to confront. Many in the working classes felt there was "something false to the spirit of Christianity in the conduct of the men who read the New Testament on Sundays and turned ruthless on the weekdays” (Hammond and Hammond 218). Barton’s frequent Biblical references after he has become a Chartist show that he has some education in the Gospel, but his view, Gaskell believes, is too exclusive. The Dives and Lazarus metaphor (8), for example, gives Barton a Biblical justification for his contempt for the rich, but he misreads the Gospel in his 33 emphasis on division rather than reconciliation. Barton’s attitude to religion is made to seem ambivalent: he both refers to the Gospel and refutes its power to guide men’s lives. The Dives and Lazarus metaphor sets up a dialogue of class struggle between the middle class narrator arguing for theological working class education and John Barton. Barton’s Biblical interpretation is at odds with the narrator’s, and the two will argue it out within the general unity of their shared code. Both use the same discourse to argue opposing sides. Thus the narrator’s function is also to win the struggle by revealing the errors in Barton’s reading. Gaskell represents Barton’s theological education as unguided by authority. Although at one point in his life Barton searched for the "right way," he couldn’t find it because no one taught him: When I was a little chap they taught me to read, and then they never gave no books: only I heard say the Bible was a good book. So when I grew thoughtful, and puzzled, I took to it. But you’d never believe black was black, or night was night, when you saw all about you acting as if black was white and night was day. . . . It was not long I tried to live Gospel-wise, but it was liker heaven than any other bit of earth has been. I’d old Alice to strengthen me: but everyone else said, "stand up for your rights, or thou’lt never get 34 ’em. (437) Barton’s contempt for the capitalists and the murder that arises from that contempt is a result of an unguided theo- logical education and those who pulled him in a secular direction. Yet there is also the factor of the middle class which itself fails to live up to the teaching of the Gos- pels. Here and elsewhere in the novel Gaskell takes care to show that Barton’s feelings are as much a result of middle class indifference as they are Barton’s "misguided" radical- ism; however, the danger Gaskell sees in Barton’s radicalism is also the fault of those who take advantage of these feelings: the trades unions. Historically, Unitarians were never sympathetic to trades unions; they "failed to realize either the necessity of them or the contributions they were later to make to English life" (Holt 204). Gaskell’s anti- pathy to unions has been noted before, but in this context there is another dimension to her attitude. Unions rely on material conditions to emphasize inequalities between the classes: their strictly secular approach, she believes, lacks the spiritual element she finds necessary in media- tion. The turning point in Barton’s attitude to the Bible came about under severe economic circumstances when during a period of unemployment his infant son became ill and he was unable to provide him the necessities he needed to survive. At this time of distress, Barton witnessed the wife of his employer leaving a shop laden with provisions for a party, 35 and thus began "the hoards of vengeance in his heart against the employers" (25). Later in the narrative, when Barton finds he cannot pay the rent, the narrator laments the absence of paternalistic values in an industrial society: "The agricultural labourer generally had strong local at- tachments: but they are far less common, almost a obliter- ated, among the inhabitants of a town" (131). Barton’s radicalism is grounded in a domestic situation, and like Mary his perception is not, Gaskell argues, entirely accu- rate: "For there are never wanting those who, either in speech or print, find it in their interest to cherish such feelings in the working classes; who know how and when to rouse the dangerous power at their command; and who use their knowledge with unrelenting purpose to either party" (25). The vengeance in Barton’s heart, then, is misdirected toward his former employer, and by extension all employers. The narrator believes union organizers and propagandists exploit working class misery, and while union exploitation does not excuse the middle class from its responsibility to the poor, those who see only material inequalities between the classes are responsible for the dissemination of danger- ous perspectives. Gaskell does, however, place most of the blame on the middle class for its indifference to the spiritual and physical well-being of the working classes. Barton has become addicted to opium, partly as a means to forget his misery, and partly to subdue his hunger: 36 And so day by day, nearer and nearer, came the diseased thoughts of John Barton . . . It is true that much of their morbid power might be ascribed to the use of opium. But before you blame too harshly for this use, or rather abuse, try a hope- less life, with daily craving of the body for food. Try not alone being without hope yourself, but seeing all around you reduced to the same despair, arising from the same circumstances: all around you telling (though they use no words or language) that they are suffering and sinking under the pressure of want. Would you not be glad to forget life and its burdens? It is true that they who purchase it pay dearly for their oblivi- on: but can you expect the uneducated to count the cost of their whistle? . . . have you taught them the science of consequences? (198) Here Gaskell forces her readers to put themselves in Barton’s position, though presumably her "educated" readers would be aware of the consequences of opium smoking. But this knowledge, kept from the working classes, affects all, for it is one of the immediate causes of Barton’s participa- tion in the murder of Harry Carson as revenge for the mill owners’ indifference. The first sentence--"day by day, nearer and nearer came the diseased thoughts of John Barton ”--sets up the narrator’s subsequent metaphor of the unedu- cated as similar to Frankenstein’s monster: "The actions of 37 the uneducated seem to me typified in those of Frankenstein, that monster of many human qualities, ungifted with a soul, a knowledge of the differences between good and evil" (199). This metaphor serves further to marginalize the weak, and reveals Gaskell as being locked into a power relationship that itself is sanctioned by the state, the economic system, and the implication that those who are "educated" are de- serving of the power to control. These assumptions, howev- er, are not what Gaskell wishes to bring forward in the metaphor. The creators of the monster are Gaskell’s readers, for the narrator continues, "Why have we made them what they are; a powerful monster, yet without the inner means for peace and happiness?" (198). The "we," of course, is the middle class whose indifference has kept the working classes uneducated and unable to make proper distinctions between good and evil. The narrator qualifies her metaphor in the case of Barton, for he, although a "Chartist, a Communist, all that is commonly called wild and visionary," has a "soul”: he is a being ”not altogether sensual; a creature who looks forward for others, if not for himself" (198). Barton, then, can envision a better society for his class: middle class indifference cannot. The distinction here implies what Gaskell believes the classes need to learn from each other: the middle classes can teach the means for "inner happiness," while the working classes can teach the middle classes the virtue of charity, of looking out for 38 others. The qualification of the Frankenstein metaphor, though, only further locks Gaskell into the power relation- ship that "needs" to remain entrenched. The ideals of charity, resignation, and abnegation perpetuate the status quo by keeping the workers powerless in their dependence on the paternalism of the more privileged classes. The "vir- tue” of charity, moreover, is a shorthand for the reconcili- ation of the spiritual with the material that Gaskell envi- sions for an organic society. The working class movements of Chartism and (Owenite) communism threaten the possibility of an emergent organic society based on ethical codes that distinguish between good and evil. Barton’s secular knowledge that he received from his involvement in trade unionism and Chartism includes some understanding of political economy, but it is his inability or unwillingness to apply what Gaskell believes are the proper theological concepts to it that are represented as ”wild and visionary." For Barton could understand that there were often not enough buyers in the market to keep the mills open, but he could only see the poor suffering (23). He learned to view the capital-labour relationship in a way that threatened the very foundations of political economy. In the chapter "Poverty and Death" Barton and Wilson visit the Davenports, and while they keep watch over the dying Ben, Wilson tells Barton of a letter he read to Mrs. Davenport from Ben, a letter "a’ about God being our father, and that we must bear patiently what’er he sends" (73). 39 Wilson found comfort in the letter, but Barton is scornful of the whole idea. He replies, If you think so, tell me this. How come it they’re [the masters] rich, and we’re poor? I’d like to know that. Had they done as they’d be done for by us? . . . You’ll say (at least many a one does), they’n getten capital, and we’n getten none. I say our labour’s our capital, and we ought to draw interest on that. They get interest on their capital somehow a’ this time, while ourn is lying idle, else how could they all live as they do? . . . They’n screwed us down to th’ lowest peg, in order to make their great big for- tunes, and build their great big houses, and we, why we’re just clemming, many and many of us. Can you say there’s nought wrong in this? (73-74) Barton’s words reflect the philosophy of many working class movements of the period, especially in Manchester where the already deep chasm between the classes was further eroded by the basic divisions within the cotton industry itself. Manchester "lacked all the usual gradations of status and wealth: masters and men faced each other almost alone" (Read 30). The Chartist movement exploited this division by making the inequalities inherent in the economic system one of its fundamental rallying devices. It seemed to many in the working classes that the capitalists were too attached to the principles of political economy, that they 40 offered lessons in economics rather than work and wages. The Chartists and others responded by formulating their own version of "political economy" based on the premise that labor, not capital, was the crucial element in industry. The Manghe5tgr_§nd_§a1figrd_5dygrti§er ran an editorial by a Chartist sympathizer that claimed "the real strength and all the resources of a country have ever spring, and must ever spring, from the lgbggr of its peopled"20 Owen’s Elifiifi put the situation more bluntly: "The political economists in Church and State are the real high priests of the realm. They have set up the golden calf . . . . Impious, dissatis- fied people, say they, you men without property, mob and scum of the earth, with minds born to inferiority and hands made for our service. Why if you are so discontented do you not seek to accumulate wealth and so become respectable like ourselves?"21 Barton’s words, then, are meant to warn Gaskell’s readers of the dangers of a purely secular know- ledge unmediated by theology, or by a theology that does not heal but instead widens the distance between rich and poor. It is not enough to teach religion to the working classes: they need, Gaskell argues, to see its relevance to society, but in order for them to do so, the middle classes must recognize their own hypocrisy and begin to live the Chris- tian ideal. 2"15 Sept. 1838; 2 Jan. 1841. Qtd. by Read 34. 211 June 1833. Qtd. by Hammond and Hammond 274. 41 However, when Gaskell confronts political economy in the novel, she herself is guilty of that which she criticiz- es in her own class. Though she claims in both the Ergragg and the novel to "know nothing of political economy" (36, 200), Gaskell’s letters show that she read Adam Smith more than once. In the novel Gaskell takes particular care to set up the economic circumstances surrounding the strike of the millworkers that leads to Barton’s murder of Harry Carson. Competing to fill a large order which the mill owners suspect was duplicated in a continental manufacturing town, a reduction in wages in announced. According to the narrator, the workers would benefit from a temporary cut in wages if the masters were able to fill the order on time, for she reasons that more orders would come their way and give the workers job security in the future (200). The workers strike and the unions move in to support them. Gaskell’s antipathy to unions again becomes evident, for the narrator claims that if only the masters had informed the workers of the circumstances regarding the order, the strike would have been averted and the unions not involved. She castigates the unions for inciting violence against the blacklegs coming from all over the north to work in the mills: "Abhorring what they considered oppression in the masters, why did they oppress others?" (202). Here Gaskell fails to see that the trade union practices she refers to as oppressive--those that set worker against worker-~are built into the fundamental principles of political economy itself. 42 The same competition that sets owner against owner also pits worker against worker. Given the care Gaskell takes in setting up the strike situation, she is still unable to perceive anything wrong with the economic system that made the strike and its consequences possible. Even though Gaskell had earlier criticized the middle class for not teaching the workers the "science of consequences," for not empowering the workers with causal knowledge, she steps back from the consequences of the knowledge she claimed the workers should have. A further understanding of the in- equalities inherent in political economy would strengthen working class movements. There are, then, places where Gaskell contradicts herself, particularly when her own reactionary prejudices colour her perception of material reality. The paternalism Gaskell wishes for is undermined here, for as she argues her thesis that working class move- ments can be contained through education and paternalism, both would seem to have their limits. The knowledge that inequalities are a consequence of the economic base threaten the infrastructure the middle class was still in the process of producing. The character in Mary_flartgn that does have the appro- priate mixture of secular and theological understanding that Gaskell champions is Job Legh, the self-educated entomolo- gist who believes that "power-looms, and railways, and such-like inventions are the gift of God" (454). Job comes closest to Gaskell’s ideological point of view whereby the 43 material and the spiritual co-exist to the "benefit" of all classes. Job’s thoughts on machinery also reveal his incor— poration of the dominant belief that what is good for the bourgeoisie must also be good for all of society. Through Job, Gaskell makes her strongest plea for a theological education that emphasizes reconciliation. He is the product of previous middle class attempts to educate the working classes that consisted chiefly of Mechanics’ Institutions and the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. These institutions stressed science and mathematics in the hopes of educating the working classes to be inventive and productive. Job Legh represents a class of workers in Manchester which, Gaskell claims, "throw the shuttle with unceasing sound, though Newton’s ‘Principia’ lies open on the loom, to be snatched at in work hours, but revelled over in meal times, or at night" (40). Job, then, is the embodi- ment of the self-reliant worker, content with the "oppor- tunities” made available to his class, that the middle class was least threatened by. At first Job’s character borders on caricature, but as he becomes more involved with the Bartons, particularly in helping Mary secure an alibi for Jem, Job is portrayed as a man with a simple faith and an active conscience. He be- comes the spokesman for the working classes and takes over the narrator’s role of mediator in the three pages Gaskell added to the novel at the insistence of her publisher (Let; tgrg 74). (It is significant that Job’s dialect virtually 44 disappears in this section). These pages, involving a conversation between Carson and Job, represent the type of exchange of experiences Gaskell felt was necessary to bring the classes to an understanding. After Barton’s repentant death bed confessions, Henry Carson asks Job to explain the details of his son’s murder. Job presents Barton’s argu- ments to Carson: what hurt him sore, and rankled in him as long as I knew him . . . was that those who wore finer clothes, and eat better food, and had more money in their pockets, kept him at arm’s length, and cared not whether his heart was sorry or glad: whether he lived or died,--whether he was bound for heaven or hell. It seemed hard to him that a heap of gold should part him and his brother so far asunder. (453) Carson responds by saying no one can regulate the demand for labour: the masters suffer from the marketplace as much as the workers do. But Job replies that he can see that the masters do not suffer as much, and that it is part of "God’s plan" that "as much of the burden of suffering as can be, should be lightened by those whom it is His pleasure to make happy, and content in their own circumstances . . . the duty of the happy is to help the suffering bear their woe" (454). Carson argues that "facts" have proven that it is better for men to be self-reliant, but Job responds that men have feelings and passions that cannot be contained by facts. 45 Finally, when Carson asks what, exactly, the masters can do, Job tells him that it is up to his own conscience to decide (455). This segment of the interchange between Job and Carson refers to Barton and men like him, not Job who is content with the status quo and a perfect specimen of the advantages of self-help. Therefore Gaskell is not dismiss- ing self-help altogether. There is, she shows, morality in self-improvement, but the middle class needs to continue to provide the means for it. The major difference between the representation of Barton and Job is that Job’s self-reliance no longer requires the "guidance" of the middle classes because he accepts his oppression as the nature of things. Job has internalized the middle class’s claims of his infe- riority and its superiority, while John Barton did not and thus became an easy target for radical ideologies. Job tells Carson that though facts cannot contain the working classes, charity can. It is Job who leads Carson’s con- science to explore another strategy that ultimately legiti- mates middle class power. Carson’s decision contains the summary of Gaskell’s argument which clearly articulates the ideas she wanted her readers to adopt and to teach to the working class: . . . a perfect understanding, and complete confi- dence and love, might exist between masters and men: that the truth might be recognized that the interests of one were the interests of all . . . that hence it was desirable to have educated 46 workers, capable of judging, not mere machines of ignorant men, and to have them bound to their employers by the ties of respect and affection, not by more money bargains alone: in short, to acknowledge the spirit of Christ as the regulating law between both parties. (459) The passage underlines Gaskell’s basic belief in the univer- sality of the kingdom of Christ and its all embracing unity. The conclusion Carson reaches further lays bare Gaskell’s ideology. The "new values" Carson adopts are still actively situated with respect to the opposing class, and defined against it. The ideology privileged in this passage is for Carson a new strategy to contain the working classes, but it is an historically common one. The "mere money bargains" between masters and men have been replaced by a bond of ”respect and affection," on which an organic society depends (Roberts 3). However, Carson is merely exchanging one set of chains for another: whether they be the chains of polit- ical economy or of Christian education, both contain the power of the working classes. The emergent space for "new” social relations Gaskell represents here is still based on working class submission to both the middle class and the law of Christ. Although Gaskell saw that moral anarchy can result from the cash nexus, by replacing it with personal obligations, these obligations still are, in effect, based on the ”benevolent" rule of the higher classes and the submission of the working classes to that rule. 47 Gaskell must have been aware of the shortcomings inher- ent in her "solution" to class relations. Carson’s new- found paternalism regulated by ”the spirit of Christ" marks Gaskell’s own dismay over the dissolving bonds between the classes in an industrial society. She falls back on a paternalistic answer--somewhat disguised in her argument for a Christian working class education--because from her posi- tion as middle class observer of working class life, her arguments must necessarily and ultimately be limited to conservative and reactionary ideologies. The residual values of organicism and religion she tried to recover and apply to a rapidly emerging industrialism are inappropriate for the working classes which demand new solutions to new and pressing problems. The conclusion of Mgry_Bgrtgn re- veals her ambivalence, for on the one hand there is Carson sternfully and thoughtfully making improvements in the system of employment in Manchester, and on the other Jem and Mary emigrating to Canada. Raymond Williams has noted that Gaskell’s ending is "far removed from the situation which she had set out to examine" (QEILQ;§.QDQ.§Q§1§LY 91). His observation appropriately emphasizes the experience of the working class characters rather than Carson’s, for Carson has the power and means to effect change in a society he controls. Yet the industrial working class is still power- less and dependent on the benevolence of the capitalists. The ending in Canada reveals Gaskell’s ambivalent attitude about the middle class’s ability to find solutions to the 48 problems of industrial society, but it is the form of Mary Berten that best uncovers her failure to find a mode of expression that represents the type of reform for which she argues. The narrator as ideologue needs further demystifica- tion, for the narration in the novel is a self-conscious mixture of genres that creates a dialectical opposition whereby there is an undermining of certain narrative para- digms in order to privilege the one that best represents the social vision of the narrator. Critics have consistently praised Gaskell for her "realism," especially for her use of dialect and her descriptions of working class living condi- tionsJ22 However, Gaskell does not finally settle on real- ism as the narrative mode that reveals the reality of work- ing class life. That she intended to do so is clear from her letters of the period in which she expressed her dismay over the fact that her readers could not recognize her "idea of a tragic poem," or that people like John Barton have lives that are "tragic poems" (Lettere 74). Instead, Gaskell undercuts her gestures in the direction of realism through her opposition to the subliterary modes of mass culture--popular romance novels and melodrama--because the InFor representative praise, see Edgar Wright’s intro- duction to the Oxford edition: David Smith’s " and Herg_11mee: Their Social Insights." Mosaic 5 (Winter 1971): 97- -106: Margaret Ganz’ s Eligebeth Gastell; Art iet in gentlict, New York: Twayne, 1969. 49- 131: and Kathleen Tillotson's W London. 1956- 200-passim. 49 working class education she champions requires the reconcil- iation of the spiritual and the material, realism and ideal- ism, the reactionary and the progressive. In the end, she finds the reconciliation impossible and settles on the very mode she spends the novel "decoding"--romance. Romance narratives turn on the ethical axis of good and evil: this ethical opposition is absent from tragedy, for ”fate" transcends the individual categories of good and evil (Jameson 110, 116). Gaskell is careful to set up a cause and effect relationship for Barton’s actions and tries to root their cause in the indifference of the middle class to working class experience. However, in the context of form the Frankenstein metaphor mentioned earlier takes on a greater resonance, for what the middle class has failed to teach the working classes is a "knowledge of the difference between good and evil" (199). The implication here is that Barton, unable to distinguish between the two, errs in his judgement, but that does not diminish the fact that Barton has committed an evil act in murdering Harry Carson. There- fore 'good" is only within the power of the middle classes who can tell the difference between it and evil. Even though Gaskell tries to show Barton’s crime is inevitable given the influences of middle class unconcern, opium, trade unions, the defeat of the Charter, and the death of his wife, the murder nevertheless uncovers her fear of working class power. She assumes, like many of her class, that the capacity for "evil" within the politicized working classes 50 is endemic. While Barton’s murder of the rake Harry Carson, who is unsympathetic to the workers’ demands during the strike, does on one level represent the inability of melo- drama--a degraded form of romance--to represent the experi- ence of the working classes, on another level it also uncov- ers the axis on which Gaskell bases her argument for a theological working class education. The subversion of good and evil does not work in the novel since Gaskell in effect reinvents romance by substituting a fate for a kind of theology that expresses a religious solution to material problems. Like all theologies, Gaskell’s depends on the axis of good and evil. The historical function of undermining inherited tradi- tional narrative paradigms requires a "secular" decoding (Jameson, Belitieel_gneeneeiete 152). The kinds of values Gaskell argues for in the novel are religious. Thus she had to find a mode that rests on the positive recombining of opposites that is able to reveal the kind of "reality" she believed to be inherent in both the material and the spiri- tual aspects of industrial society. But the problem she confronts is too much for her. If "machines and such-like inventions are the gifts of God," how can the workers them- selves justify the reality of their material conditions with a spiritual "gift" from "above"? Barton’s "flaw" is his inability to sustain his quest to "make great riches and great poverty square with Christ’s Gospel" (452). His search is frustrated by his material circumstances and by 51 putting the blame on the capitalists rather than on his own aborted spiritual quest. In representing the end of Barton’s life, Gaskell had to once again resort to melodra- ma, for Barton dies in Carson’s arms moments after Carson has forgiven Barton. Barton resumes the search at the end of the narrative, his "avenging conscience far more diffi- cult to bear than any worldly privation” (Lettere 74). The education of John Barton is based on learning what he can do to lighten his suffering, and that is to forgive others their trespasses and to hold sacred the "eternal laws of God" (Letters 74) - Romance involves some feeling for a salvational future. For the working classes, however, it would seem Gaskell felt emigration is the necessary refuge from the nightmare of social class. Yet Mary’s and Jem’s emigration is a result of the distrust Jem’s fellow employees had for a man still under suspicion for murder, not because Jem was unemployable in England. Jem’s master wants to keep him on (442-443). The possibility of a ”salvational future" rests with Carson who makes reforms in the system as a result of his deeper understanding of the Gospel. Carson’s theology is an affir- mation of human relationships, but it also becomes a retreat from class realities. Gaskell disempowers the working class movements of Chartism and trade unionism by putting the responsibility for reform in the hands of the capitalists. Such "salvation" would necessarily be to the benefit of the middle class in easing its collective guilty conscience, and 52 keeping the means of production in its control. While throughout the novel Gaskell tries to demystify the modes of melodrama and romance by seeming to privilege tragedy and realism, the theological basis of her argument undermines her purpose because it exists on the good/evil opposition and the need for a faith in a salvational future. When Gaskell resorts to melodrama in Barton’s death scene, the futility of her search for a mode of expression to suit her ideology is clear.23 Gaskell’s failure to find a narrative mode to adequate- ly represent working class life or to convey the kind of organicism she envisioned for an industrial society is a result of historical contradictions. Although she is not the first novelist to try to give expression to working class life, on the surface she seemed to have, as Kathleen Tillotson claimed, "no ax to grind" (202).fi’ However, the complexity of industrial society’s problems gave rise to a plethora of solutions divided by religion, politics, and class. Within each affiliation there were also contradic- tions and struggles as each element gave its own answers. The ambivalences that arose from the complexities of society ‘BFor the most thorough treatment of the eclectic form of Mery_§ertee, see Catherine Gallagher’s excellent work, The Industrielizetien er EQQLish Fictien, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1985. 62-87. Gallagher confronts the problem of form in the novel as Gaskell’s response to an emerging Unitarian theology of causality proposed by James Martineau. 2"See also Ganz’s comment that Gaskell’s asset is her "spontaneous, non-manipulative interest in humanity" 51. 53 often revealed, as in the cases of Maurice and Gaskell, that an attempt through education to overcome the separating of the political from the ideological, the religious from the economic in order to appeal to some underlying sense of unity of the various levels of society is an empty appeal (Jameson 40). Ultimately, discourses that claim to recon- cile only reinforce the very differences they attempt to overcome. Any liberatory educator must confront the contra- diction between the oppressor and the oppressed and must stand with the oppressed in explicit opposition to the oppressor.ZS nery_nerten was Gaskell’s attempt to contain an emerg- ing secular society by arguing for an education for the working classes that is supported by the State but con- trolled by a theology that unites all of the classes. Like Maurice, she recognized her historical moment as an opportu- nity to argue for an organic industrial society. The bonds between the family, church, and state would be the basis for the dependency of the individual on those whose duty is to protect. An education grounded in an universal theology that united all would teach the "necessity" of these bonds to counteract the moral anarchy inherent in capitalism. Gaskell, however, merely wants to reform, not overthrow, individualistic capitalism. She could not, in the end, 25See Paulo Freire’s Pegegegy ef the Oppressed 27-56 for further explanation of how the contradiction between the oppressors and the oppressed can be overcome. 54 break from her own class consciousness in order to stand with the workers: the most she could do was sympathize. Gaskell’s strength in the novel is her recognition that education as a panacea for working class unrest does not discredit those who are not educated: the middle class itself needed to learn how to adapt organic values to an industrial society. Although Gaskell sees the middle class as responsible for the conditions of the working classes, she nevertheless offers a solution that does not address problems that are actually based in the economic system itself. By ignoring the real source of Barton’s attitudes, Gaskell’s argument is a red herring. The eclectic form of the novel, with its idealistic, wish-fulfilling conclusion, undermines Barton’s story as a tragedy, instead causing it to become a romantic, religious vision tainted by the very melodrama she dismisses as inadequate for representing working class life. Institutions and Reform in fierg_11mee In the early 1850’s when trade unions were struggling to be recognized as legitimate organizations, the utilitari- an William Ellis was creating schools which were "expressly designed to equip [working class children] for their econom- ic and social function in an industrial society" (Gilmour 213). By 1854 Chartism was nearly dead, but the market’s difficulties and many employers’ self-interest begat sus- tained and radical union activity, especially in the indus- trial north. Unions had won the right to exist thirty years before, but that right had little value without further concessions (Checkland 129). As British historian Sydney Checkland has noted, trade unions needed to be recognized as combinations rather than corporations in order to strike legally, to be free of liability caused by industrial ac- tion, to have the right to persuade workers to join, and to be allowed to picket (129-130). It took awhile for unions to acquire a legal status in these areas; not until 1871 was their legitimacy fully established. The debate over educa- tion reform for the working classes also continued during this period and resulted in the founding of some model schools based on utilitarian principles. The forerunners of these institutions were known as the Birbeck schools, found- ed by William Ellis who wrote in his £reepeetge_ef_e_§eheel Wm that the "unfavorable condition of European society may be reckoned by the 55 56 imperfect education of the great body of people . . .[who] have not been trained to submit, in their practical conduct, to the requirements of [natural laws], as necessary conditions of prosperity" (1). "Natural laws," of course, were in 1854 the laws of political economy, which among other things, insisted on allowing the market to regulate itself without interference from either the state or the trade unions. The connection between utilitarian education (i.e. an education in political economy) and trade unionism, as we have seen in Mery_Bertee, is not a tenuous one. Middle class interest in working class education was in many in- stances a campaign of containment.“’ Like Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens had an "ax to grind" regarding the education of the workers, but he had a greater awareness of institutions as cultural practice, particularly the messages they sent to the workers to stay in their place. Herd_11mee (1854) is a critique of how education, and to a lesser extent churches and the workplace, enforce selective mean- ings, values, and activities in a developing industrial hegemony. In the novel, the extremities of utilitarianism permeate the values encouraged by these institution. Dickens’s solution to the false values he exposes in Herd Timee is to allow "Fancy" into the lives of the Coketown z"See Robin Gilmour’s essay, "The Gradgrind School: Political Economy in the Classroom" for an extensive analy- sis of Gradgrindery as a strategy of cultural containment. 57 citizens to counteract the emphasis on the "dismal science" (or "pig philosophy" as Carlyle called utilitarianism) that sought to prepare people to take their place in the indus- trial order. Yet unlike Robert Tressell who had the advan- tage of a fully-developed socialist alternative to the dominant economic system, Dickens cannot sustain his argu- ment that an imaginative reprieve from industrialism is enough, and he is unable to offer much hope for change. Moreover, it seems Dickens himself knew this; the ending of the novel pleads for intervention, but it is not clear what form it should take. While Dickens can locate the sources of much of what he finds wrong in Victorian culture, he cannot identify any- thing emergent that is effectually oppositional to the domi- nant. This is not to say that he did not try, for the form of Herg_11mee can be seen as an attempt to recover what Walter Benjamin has called the "communicability of experi- ence" which is fostered by oral storytelling and often involves the exchange and dissemination of moral fables and fairy tales.”' Yet just as we have seen that in Mery Berten Gaskell fails to find a form to represent working class experience, in Herd_Timee Dickens’s content fails his form. The community of readers and listeners he seeks to create are left with a message that is at best ambivalent 27'Benjamin says that reading a tale to others creates a companionship close to that of someone telling a story to others (100). 58 and at worst despondent. It has been noted that in the novel Dickens was ”striv- ing to articulate the parts of a civilization . . . with an insistence on the typical and even the average which suited the industrial and mass aspects of that age” (Craig 14). These parts of civilization are more specifically identifi- able as institutions whose function was to socialize indi- viduals into the developing industrial hegemony. Raymond Williams has described the profound influence institutions have on the active social process. "Socializa- tion” is, he observes in MQIXISELQDQ_LLE§£§§QI§, "a specific kind of incorporation" into the dominant hegemony: Any process of socialization of course includes things that all human beings have to learn, but any specific process ties this necessary learning to a selected range of meanings, values, and prac- tices which, in the very closeness of their asso- ciation with necessary learning, constitute the real foundations of the hegemonic. In a family children are cared for and taught to care for themselves, but within this necessary process fundamental and selective attitudes to self, to others, to the social order, and to the material world are both consciously and unconsciously taught. Education transmits necessary knowledge and skills, but always by a particular selection from the whole available range, and with intrinsic 59 attitudes, both to learning and social relations, which are in social practice virtually inextrica- ble. Institutions such as churches are explicitly incorporative. Specific communities and specific places of work, exert powerful and immediate pres- sures on the conditions of living and making a living, teach, confirm, and in most cases finally enforce selective meanings, values, and activi- ties. (117-118) Williams warns, however, that the sum of institutions does not necessarily constitute an organic hegemony. The reduc- tion of institutions to an "ideological state apparatus” ignores the contradictions and conflicts between what are experienced as different purposes and different values" (118). In order for the hegemonic to be effective, there must be "self-identification with the hegemonic forms: a specific and internalized ’socialization’ which is expected to be positive but which, if that is not possible, will rest on a (resigned) recognition of the inevitable and the neces- sary" (118). Early in Herg_11mee, Dickens describes Coketown in terms of its institutions, which together strike the "key- note" of industrialism. The role of Gradgrind’s model school is established in the first two chapters. Next, a parallel is drawn between a disciplined education and the disciplined mechanization that pervades Coketown: It is ”a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which 60 interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves, for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled” (17). Factories dominate Coketown: they are, in a sense, its central fact. The lives of its laboring citizens provide the fuel for them: the industrialists who own them regulate the amount and quality of the fuel.” "You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful," Dickens says, including the "pious ware- houses" of red brick that are the churches (17). Coketown, then, is the sum of its institutions, its schools, churches, and factories, and Dickens will subsequently show to what degrees its inhabitants are resigned to the "inevitable and necessary." There has been much discussion on Dickens’s critique of utilitarianism, particularly as it was practiced in certain "model schools.T” Thomas Gradgrind is the "eminently practical" education reformer who teaches the pupils at his school utilitarian principles which are, as F.R. Leavis has observed, "The aggressive formulation of an inhumane spirit" (228). The pervasiveness of utilitarian ideas--which since 1830 were inseparable from political economy”--in the 28In "W and the Structure of Industrialism: The Novel as Factory," Patricia E. Johnson claims that Herd Times "uses the physical structure of the factory itself as both the metaphor for the destructive forces at work on its characters’ lives and as the metaphor for its own aesthetic unity as a novel" (129). ”Philip CollinS’s 212W (London: MacMillan, 1963) is the standard work on the theme of educa- tion in Dickens’s writing. See also Gilmour and especially Coles for more current analyses on the theme. iwhltick provides a succinct explanation of the rela- tionship between political economy and utilitarianism. 61 middle of the nineteenth century cannot be overestimated}1 Thomas Malthus’s theory of population, for example, which argued that food production increases arithmetically, while the population increases geometrically, had a "numerical precision" which "gave an authority, a mathematical exacti- tude and certitude to the theory which enhanced its appeal and was almost mesmerizing in its effect" (Himmelfarb, The Igee_efi_£eyerty 127). Malthusianism’s emphasis on numbers, on "facts," is the basis of Gradgrindery. Students are identified by number, taught percentages as responses to complex social and economic problems, and encouraged to apply the "iron laws" of political economy to every aspect of their lives. Gertrude Himmelfarb has observed how Malthus helped to make Adam Smith’s ideas "more congenial to early capitalism": [Malthus’s theory] taught the poor . . . that they were fated to remain poor and would be doing well if they managed not to become poorer than they were, that nature, not some malevolent employer, kept wages down, that poverty was a fact of life in the order of such other natural facts . . . It taught paternalistic, philanthropic employers that they too were bound by these natural laws, that any attempt on their part to interfere with them for the benefit of their employees would 31Himmelfarb is especially adept in locating aspects of utilitarianism throughout Victorian culture. 62 necessarily rebound to the disadvantage of the workers, that true humanity consisted in keeping faith with nature. And, of course, it taught the government to stay out of the economic process, on the ground that wages, prices, hours, conditions of work, and all other economic factors should be determined the only way they could be naturally, efficiently, justly determined, by the free market, and that the main function of legislation was to pass such positive laws as would make the institutions of society congruent with natural laWS- (WY 130) Gradgrind’s commitment to instilling these ideas in his students and children represents the attempt to make the hegemonic process self-generating. One measure of this is the names he gives his sons: His eldest carries his own name; the two others are called Adam Smith Gradgrind and Malthus Gradgrind. The Gradgrind children and pupils, then, are very deliberately being prepared to enter into the hegemonic process. As is evident from most of his novels, Dickens perceived the profound influence educational institutions had on socialization. The Gradgrind school is the subject of much of the initial satire in Herg_11mee, but it is interesting that by focusing on Gradgrind’s utilitarian philosophy, many readers of the novel treat the fact that 63 his school is for working class pupils as incidentald32 Bitzer, of course, has received attention as the product of a utilitarian education, as have Tom and Louisa Gradgrind. What is particularly significant about their education is what they are taught about the working class, for that has a tremendous effect on their social relationships, and is crucial to the hegemonic process. Although he is from the working class, Bitzer has no feeling of class solidarity with the workers. In reference to unrest at Bounderby’s mill, Bitzer tells Mrs. Sparsit: ”Our people are a bad lot, ma’am: but that is not news, unfortunately" (87). To Mrs. Sparsit’s reply that "these people must be conquered, and that it’s high time it was done, once for all," Bitzer tells her that she "couldn’t put it clearer I am sure, ma’am" (87). The original manuscript had Mrs. Sparsit saying, "I only know that if the people will not be conquered by smooth means, they must be con- quered by rough. Conquered they must be . . .T” One is able to read "smooth means" as a reference to utilitarian education, from which Bitzer has emerged fully indoctrinated into the dominant attitudes toward the working class. It is no wonder Bitzer compares himself favorably to Tom and seeks to take his place at Bounderby’s bank. His first person inColes, Craig, Gilmour, Altick, Himmelfarb, and Eagleton are among these readers. 3”See "Textual Notes" 254 in the Norton Critical Edi- tion. 64 plural is a guise to defer to Mrs. Sparsit, while his real desire is to escape identification with people for whom he has learned there is no deference. Tom and Louisa learn similar attitudes toward the workers. Tom uses the prevailing ideas that the working class is "a bad lot" by framing Stephen Blackpool for a bank robbery he has committed in order to pay gambling debts. Dickens makes it clear that Tom’s dissipation is a result of his education: It was very remarkable that a young gentleman who had been brought up under one continuous system of unnatural restraint, should be a hypocrite, but it was certainly the case with Tom. It was very strange that a young gentleman who had never been left to his own guidance for five consecutive minutes, should be incapable at last of governing himself: but so it was with Tom. It was altogeth- er unaccountable that a young gentleman whose imagination had been strangled in his cradle, should still be inconvenienced by its ghost in the form of grovelling sensualities, but such a mon- ster, beyond all doubt, was Tom. (101) Tom represents a resistance to selective hegemonic pressures since there is a developed conflict between the middle class values he had been taught and the values he lives. For example, he knows he is expected to be a model employee at Bounderby’s bank and that gambling is statistically 65 indefensible, but he has learned to manipulate those around him to achieve his pleasures, and in the case of framing Stephen Blackpool, to pay for them. His selfishness, Dickens emphasizes, is as much an element of utilitarianism as are the facts and figures Tom would like to blow up with "a thousand barrels of gunpowder" (40). Tom "was becoming that not unprecedented triumph of calculation which is usually at work on number one" (48). Although his values are from utilitarianism, most of them are representative of a different selection and emphasis from the same range available to his father. Tom is especially adept at manipulating his sister Louisa. Louisa’s character has also consistently been read as a product of Gradgrind’s educational methods.“' Yet there is a strong similarity between Louisa and Stephen Blackpool. Both sacrifice their personal happiness for loveless marriages, and both are marginal within the larger culture, Louisa as a woman and Stephen as a laborer. Ironi- cally, it is Tom’s manipulation and Bounderby’s dismissal of Stephen that bring out the latent humanity in Louisa. Soon after Bounderby’s bank is robbed, everyone assumes Stephen is guilty although the evidence against him is purely cir- cumstantial. Before the robbery Louisa had sought out Stephen to give him money after her husband had fired him. She had some first-hand knowledge of Stephen and Rachael “Collins, Craig, Leavis, Gold, are among the better readings: Gallagher’s however, is by far the best. 66 that mitigates what she has learned about them from the Gradgrind method of education. While Bounderby sacks Ste- phen by forcing him to speak for all the workers, Louisa is able to separate him, to come "face to face with . . . individuality in connection with them" (130). The narration makes much of this circumstance: She knew of their existence by hundreds and by thousands. She knew what results in work a given number of them would produce in a given space of time. She knew them in crowds passing to and from their nests, like ants or beetles. But she knew from her reading infinitely more of the ways of toiling insects than of these toiling men and women. Something to be worked so much and paid so much, and there ended: something to be infallibly settled by laws of supply and demand: something that blundered against those laws, and floundered into difficulty: something that was a little pinched when wheat was dear, and over-ate itself when wheat was cheap; something that increased at such a rate of percentage, and yielded such anoth- er percentage of crime, and such another percent- age of pauperism: something wholesale, of which vast fortunes were made: something that occasion- ally rose like a sea, and did some harm and waste (chiefly to itself), and fell again: This she knew 67 the Coketown Hands to be. (120-121) Louisa does not try to fit what she sees into what she has learned; it seems as if the facts fall away as she faces Stephen. The repetition in the second paragraph of the indefinite pronoun emphasizes the impersonal nature of her education, so there is progress yet to be made. This scene is a turning point of Louisa’s character. Whereas before she had learned to identify with hegemonic forms (an identi- fication her father fully believes to be positive), and had resigned herself to the inevitable and necessary since she could do nothing to oppose those restraints--her refrain is “What does it matter?"--at Stephen’s she acts on her own to interfere and is so moved by his loyalty to Rachael that she bends toward Stephen "with a deference that was new in her" (122). By failing its victims, Gradgrindery creates conflict within the hegemonic process. Tom is in conflict with his father and Bounderby (who represents the hegemonic in prog- ress), and Louisa experiences opposing feelings, particularly when she begins to think that Stephen could have robbed the bank, and when Harthouse pursues her. Tom and Louisa reflect their narrow socialization. Bitzer, of course, is fully incorporated into the developing hegemony, but all three represent the limitations Dickens perceives in the hegemonic process. The churches in Coketown further underscore the con- fines of middle class institutions that seek to regulate the 68 lives of citizens. Dickens’s choice of the phrase ”eighteen religious persuasions" emphasizes the main purpose of reli- gion to induct people into a point of view. The red brick churches are indistinguishable from other Coketown buildings with similar goals, but unlike the schools and the facto- ries, the churches fail completely to indoctrinate the work- ing classes. Dickens satirizes the churches’ attempts to incorporate the factory workers: These portentous infants being alarming creatures to stalk about in any human society, the eighteen denominations incessantly scratched at one ano- ther’s faces and pulled one another’s hair by way of agreeing on the steps to be taken for the im- provement--which they never did: a surprising circumstance, when the happy adaptation of the means to the end is considered. (38) The workers are perceived as both monsters who instill dread and as infants who are impressionable, malleable, and therefore easily inculcated. There is the potential to incorporate them, but the conflict among the denominations regarding the methods to be used to achieve their ends prevents them from "improving" the workers. "Happy adapta- tion” in the last clause can be read as a sarcastic refer- ence to the containment of the workers that religious doc- trine entails. As with Tom, the complex hegemonic process is impaired by conflicts among different purposes and dif- ferent values. Although in the case of the eighteen 69 denominations, the desired result is shared, there is no agreement on the methods to achieve hegemony. Perhaps the institution that is most effective in es- tablishing hegemony in Coketown is the workplace, particu- larly the factories. Bounderby gives Harthouse the "facts" of the mills: they are pleasant places to work, the work is light, and it is "the best-paid work there is" (96). The mills, however, are unnatural places, in contrast to the titles of the novel’s three books: "Sowing," "Reaping," and "Gathering." Patricia E. Johnson observes that these head- ings represent Dickens’s implicit criticism of "the unnatu- ral method of production that the factory system represents'I (131). The juxtaposition of the natural and the unnatural is--along with "Fancy"--an attempt to privilege the natural, but the pervasive metaphors of industrialism in the narra- tive preclude this emphasis. Stephen Blackpool and Rachael, furthermore, are relentlessly represented as being inextricably caught up in the immediate pressures of indus- trialism. Their conditions of living and making a living require them to adhere to the rules of time, place and economics. They must follow the routine on which the suc- cess of an industrial culture depends. Every morning the factories "burst into illumination," followed by "a clatter- ing of clogs upon the pavement: a rapid ringing of bells: and all the melancholy mad elephants, polished and oiled for the day’s monotony" (53). Time is the most obvious re- straint in Coketown. (The one time Stephen breaks his 7O routine to ask Bounderby’s advice on getting a divorce from his drunken wife, he is put in his place with the admonition that there are two laws, one for the rich and one for the poor: therefore he learns he is further restrained by the law). To mark the passage of time, Dickens writes, "Time went on in Coketown like its own machinery: so much material wrought up, so much fuel consumed, so many powers worn out, so much money made" (69). As David Craig had noted, "The industrial image that haunts hare Itmes is of machinery that runs itself, as though without the volition of the human being it nevertheless compels to attend it" (24). These human beings are thought of as "Hands," reduced to the appendages that produce the profit for Bounderby and the other millowners. It is Josiah Bounderby the "self-made man," banker, and manufacturer who is the prime enforcer of Coketown’s values. He is represented as the product of the pervasive cultural idea of self-help which extolled the profitable ethic of work and self-education for the improvement of material conditions. Bounderby’s "key note" is the story of his triumph against overwhelming odds, including abandonment by his mother, abuse from his grandmother, and a childhood spent on the streets. This background, however, turns out to be a fiction--an actual fiction as opposed to Bounderby’s insistence that his mill workers all desire venison and tur- tles soup eaten with a golden spoon (54). Among the fictions Of’ (:oketown is, "Any capitalist there, who had made sixty 71 thousand pounds out of sixpence, always professed to wonder why the sixty thousand nearest Hands didn’t each make sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence" (90). It is true that Bounderby is from the working class, but the reality of his childhood suggests parental sacrifice and employer patronage were main reasons for his material success. His mother ”pinched a bit" to apprentice him to a master who turned out to be kind and helpful (199). In fact, the apprenticeship system as it was organized in the 1850’s suggests that Bounderby received help from more than his mother and his master. Most apprentices learned skilled trades which made up the "labor elite" who often, according to Sydney Checkland, "gained the power to control entry into their part of the labour market . . . by regulating the labour supply in terms of quantity and quality" (128-129). Bounderby’s mother is understating the sacrifices she made to apprentice him, for in order to get him into a skilled trade, she had to pay dearly, and once he was in, the system itself helped him to succeed. Yet even after Bounderby’s lies are revealed, he con- tinues to generate his image by creating a kind of Bounderby Institute whereby twenty-five men over the age of fifty - five, each taking upon himself the name, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, should for ever dine in Bounderby Hall, for ever lodge in Bounderby build- ings, for ever attend a Bounderby chapel, for ever 72 go to sleep under a Bounderby chaplain, for ever be supported out of a Bounderby estate, [would] for ever nauseate all healthy stomachs with a vast amount of Bounderby balderdash and bluster. (225) These Bounderbys insure that the institution is free of any of the confusion and conflict of purpose and values, that the conditions exist for self-identification with hegemonic forms to make for an effective incorporation. In a sense, Bounderby is able to create the means for incorporation, but his efforts are, in the end, limited, for as Williams makes clear, "An effective culture . . . is always more than the sum of its institutions: . . . mainly because it is at the level of a whole culture that the crucial interrelations, including confusions and conflicts, are really negotiated (W 118) - The most obvious conflict within the developing indus- trial hegemony in Herg_11mee is the union activity at Bounderby’s mill. Much attention has been paid to Dickens’s representation of unionism in the novel, most of which shares Leavis’s view that Dickens portrays unionism as "no- thing better than the pardonable error of the misguided and oppressed"(205).i35 A thoughtful exception to this common view is found in Nicholas Coles’s "The Politics of 39:9 Iimee,” which insists that reading the novel in light of ar- ticles appearing in Heheehelg_flerde is fallacious. In the :”Eagleton contributes to this point of view, as do Holloway and Bratlinger. 73 context of the fiction, Dickens’s view of unionism is more complex and thus not reducible to what Terry Eagleton calls a "typically middle-class fear of the ’mob’" (4)fi“’ Coles argues that since Stephen’s reason for not joining the union is personal (and unstated), his subsequent alienation is not merely a result of being a casualty of the closed shop rule, for he does ”feel enough of the grievances of his class" to join them (164). His reason, then, is irrelevant to the issues between employers and workers. There is also a va- gueness as to why the workers are banding together, although in this instance Dickens notes that they are wrong (106). Perhaps he is referring to the meeting when Stephen is sent to ”coventry" for not joining in, but that the initial pur- pose for combining is as "upright and honest" as the men in the meeting (106). The source for much of the discussion on unionism in the novel lies in the portrayal of Slackbridge the union organizer who, like Gaskell’s "gentleman from Lon- don," represents the professional agitator inciting the wor- kers against their "best interests." But Dickens makes it clear that the workers do not completely trust Slackbridge, that they know he is full of "froth and fume" (105). When Slackbridge is accusing Stephen of betraying his class, a "strong” voice calls out, "’Is the man heer? If the man’s heer, let’s hear the man himseln, ’stead 0’ yo’" (107). 3“My initial reaction to the representation of unionism in the novel was similar to Eagleton’s. Since then, Wil- liams has taught me that the cultural source(s) of middle class responses to working class movements are more complex and variable than statements such as Eagleton’s allow. 74 This demand is received with applause. Moreover, it is Stephen who mitigates the danger of "all Slackbridges:" by telling Bounderby, ’ . . . if yo’ was t’ tak’ a hundred Slackbridges . . . an was t’ sew ’em up in separate sacks, and sink ’em in the deepest ocean as were made ere ever dry land coom to be, yo’d leave the muddle just wheer ’tis. Mischeevous strangers! . . . "when ha’ we not heernn, I am sure, sin ever we can call to mind, 0’ the mischevous strangers! "Tis not by theh the trouble’s made, Sir. "Tis not wi’ them ’t commences.’ (115) Through Stephen, as Coles notes, the outside agitator theory "becomes another of the fictions of Coketown" (165). It is true that Dickens side-steps the political issues involved in unionism by emphasizing what he sees as the re- pression of Stephen’s individuality. However, his represen- tation underscores another error in the developing industri- al hegemony, and that is not simply unionism itself but the refusal of the mill owners to enter into negotiations to solve the problems of industrialization. Lockouts were com- mon during this crucial point in labor union history and were extremely effective in breaking strikes. From his trip to Preston, Dickens knew how fragile strikes were.y' Be- fore the workers meet in the novel, Dickens had made it 3”See "On Strike" 286-289 in the Norton Critical Edi- tion. 75 clear that Coketown manufacturers were resistant to any interference in their businesses and would respond to it by threatening to pitch their property in the Atlantic (84). He clearly makes fun of this threat: [Coketown] had been ruined so often, that it was amazing how it had borne so many shocks. Surely there never was such fragile china-ware as that of which the millers of Coketown were made . . . They were ruined, when they were required to send lab- ouring children to school: they were ruined, when inspectors were appointed to look into their works: they were ruined, when such inspectors considered it doubtful whether they were quite justified in chopping people up with their machin- ery: they were utterly undone, when it was hinted that perhaps they need not always make quite so much smoke. (84) At some level within the culture, there are reforms being negotiated, but the manufacturers had the political power to prevent the process of reform. Thomas Gradgrind, for exam- ple, is the M.P. representing the interests of the Coketown manufacturers. Even at the conclusion of the novel when he had undergone a change of heart, he becomes "much despised by his late political associates" who have more "to do with one another, and owe no duty to an abstraction called a People" (225). Thus Dickens seems ambivalent about how ef- fective the reforming impulse of unions can be when 76 utilitarian ideology is detectable within an institution that should be a strong force of negotiation. There is a different kind of cultural negotiation discernable in Herg_11mee which emphasizes Dickens’s pro- posal that "Fancy” is necessary in an industrial society. Institutions derive most of their character from the cul- ture, but as Williams observes, the interrelations between the culture and institutions are negotiated at the level of the whole culture through what he calls formations (Merriem ehe_Literethre 118-119). Formations are "recognizable as conscious movements and tendencies" which in their widest sense ”can by no means be wholly identified with formal institutions, or their formal meanings and values, and which can sometimes even be positively contrasted with them" (119). They can be analyzed as modes of specialized prac- tice (including literary practice) that cannot, in many cases, be reduced to some generalized hegemonic function (119). "Fancy is the explicit theme in Herg_Timee that is emphasized through many narrational discussions of it, an abundance of metaphors, and the circus which embodies it.:38 Throughout the novel, "Fancy" has a number of connotations, including "wonder," the imagination, and in general, any- thing that opposes being regulated and governed by fact. Sissy Jupe, who is unable to fit into Gradgrind’s school 38Catherine Gallagher argues that the novel is about metaphors, that it is organized around the metaphor of the society as a family, which in the end, breaks down. 77 because she "will wonder," is the product of the circus and the fairy tales she read to her father and are performed by the troupe. It is "fancy" that is in opposition to the in- stitutions Dickens criticizes, and seeks to be irreducible to the developing hegemonic function. One of Sissy’s most prevalent memories of her father is reading him fairy tales and other fanciful stories to "cheer his courage" and "forget all his troubles in wondering whe- ther the sultan would let the lady go on with the story, or would have her head out off before it was finished" (46). The anti-industrial subculture of the circus allows for this exchange of tales, but it is more difficult for the workers who sometimes use the library in Coketown "after fifteen hours’ work" to read "mere fables about men and women, more or less like themselves, and about children, more or less like their own" (38). In an industrial culture, Dickens seems to have known, the process of assimilating stories was becoming rare. Walter Benjamin, observing how the change in the means of production affects storytelling in modern cul- ture, writes that, The activities that are intimately associated with boredom are already extinct in the cities and de- clining in the country as well. With this the gift for listening is lost and the community of listeners disappears. For storytelling is always the art of repeating stories, and this art is lost when the stories are no longer retained. It is 78 lost because there is no more weaving and spinning to go on while they are being listened to. (91) To a lesser extent, the same observation can be made about early industrial culture. There are no opportunities for Stephen and his fellow workers to tell stories in the facto- ry, for the noise is so loud that each night Stephen leaves his power loom, he has an "odd sensation upon him which the stoppage of the machinery always produces--the sensation of its having worked and stopped in his own head" (49). The middle class Gradgrind children have a lot of time for storytelling--Louisa spends hours staring at the fire--but they are victims of "the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of educating the reason without stooping to the cul- tivation of the sentiment and affections" (37-38). What Benjamin calls "the gift for listening" is also absent be- tween the workers and manufacturers in Coketown. Bounderby does not listen to Stephen because he assumes that as a ”Hand" he is a knowable being. Stephen’s dying words in- clude the observation, "If Mr. Bounderby had ever kno’d me right--if he’d even know’d me at aw--he woudl’n ha’ took’n offence wi’ me. He would’n ha’ suspect’n me" (207). For Dickens, the factory and the school are mechanical arts retarding what Benjamin calls "communicable experience" (84). "Fancy," then, could create the conditions for communi- cable experience remaining a part of English culture, par- ticularly at a time of rapid changes. To achieve this, 79 Dickens uses elements of oral storytelling to give the novel a ”tellability." His flat characters, grotesques, satire, direct and indirect references to ogres, fairies, fairy tales and fables, all combine in a story using imagination and amusement to underscore the necessity for them, espe- 3’ David Craig has cially in their unrevised forms. observed that by "creating motifs and pereehee distinguished by a few bold, vivid, and repeated traits, far flung and complex forces are organized into a homogeneous fable” in Herg_11mee (26). There also is the element of counsel. It is the nature of fairy tales to teach as well as amuse. Benjamin says that the fairy tale "to this day the first tutor of children because it was once the first tutor of mankind, secretly lives on in the story" (102). Eagleton claims that the characters in the novel "inhabit a fictional world which has the open, public quality of the forum or market place, appealing to a solidarity of feeling in its readership" (7). But when we get to the moral, it rings hollow, and this is not only because "fancy" is not a suffi- cient formation to oppose the developing hegemonic, but also because the novel form, in Benjamin’s words, "neither comes from oral tradition nor goes into it" (87). 3“’Kotzin's book. We. has a perfunctory treatment of Dickens’s belief in the utility of fairy tales which is based on Dickens’s article "Frauds on the Fairies." There Dickens posits that "In an utilitarian age . . . it is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected" (39). He emphasizes their moral value. 80 Sleary is the character who emphasizes that in an industrial culture, "People mutht be amuthed" (222). He also moralizes that "there ith a love in the world" that is not all "Thelf-interetht," and that the world "Hath a way of ith own calculating or not calculating" (222). Both of these lessons in the context of the material conditions of the workers and the conclusion of the novel do not hold up. It is difficult to imagine Stephen or Rachael using their hard-earned money on the circus, or even spending their precious leisure time in Coketown’s library reading fab- les."’o Moreover, in the end nothing has been resolved in terms of the larger culture: Twenty-five Bounderbys rule Coketown: Bitzer has been promoted at the bank: Stephen dies from a fall in an abandoned mine shaft; Louisa remains childless with no opportunity for passing on the lessons she has learned; Tom dies alone: Gradgrind becomes politically impotent: and the classes remain separate. This bleak con- clusion, as Nicholas Coles says, does "follow the logic of [the novel’s] art," but when Dickens pleads for his readers to take responsibility for the fates of the characters, it is not at all clear what that should be. Education, union- ism, industrialization are all tainted by political economy and utilitarianism, two "enlightened" ideologies.‘1 Fancy ‘“It is here, I think, that the parallel between Ste- phen and Louisa breaks down. In the context of the novel, Louisa requires ”Fancy" more than Stephen. Stephen needs a divorce for his well-being. “In "Social Criticism in Dickens," Williams wonders if ”the human and social condition as Dickens saw it has been much changed by the kind of work we call enlightened" (222). 81 as the antithesis to utilitarianism does not result in a synthesis£u Therefore the end, as Coles says, merely sug- gests that "socially redeeming action, including [Dickens’s] own reforming action, is effectually impossible" (173). Dickens wrote fierd_11mee as a serial, "with a view to its publication altogether in a compact cheap form."“3 His magazine Beheehelg_flerge needed to increase circulation, so his printers believed the inclusion of a novel by Dickens would increase sales. They were right; circulation nearly doubled.“’ In its serial form and book form, nerg_11mee was very consciously a commodity text. Norman N. Feltes defines a commodity text as produced by a writer within a determinate capital- ist mode, a structure of specific means and rela- tions of production, in which the series provides the distinctive form of control, and in which the profits are made by the ever more inevitable in- terpellation of a mass bourgeois audience. (10) This fact seems to taint Dickens’s plea for intervention in the novel’s final paragraph: "Dear reader! It rests with you and me, whether, in our two fields of action, similar things shall be or not" (227). These "things" refer to ‘uThe dialectic of optimism and anxiety is analyzed in Houghton 27-89. ‘“Quoted in Ford and Monod vii. A full treatment of the serial text of Herg_11mee as a commodity-text would be a fascinating study. ‘“Ford and Monod vii. Feltes argues that series pro- duction allows the "extraction of ever greater surplus value from the very production process itself" (9). 82 Louisa learning to accept fancy, trying hard to know her "humbler fellow-creatures, and to beautify their lives with imaginative graces and delights" (226). By 1850 Dickens’s material benefits from writing had reached heights previous- ‘“ Thus it becomes understandable ly unknown to authors. that Dickens is ambivalent about industrial culture when he reaped the awards made possible by technological progress. Another problem is the book form. It is difficult, ac- cording to Walter Benjamin, to create a communicable experi- ence when the intervention of printing--with its dependence on the book--creates isolation (87). Ironically, the novel form would have affected Dickens’s considerable working class readership a bit less than the middle class readers he targets in his novels. The varying levels of literacy in working class culture fostered the exchange of stories and news. Sissy reads to her father and when the millworkers read to each other the placards accusing Stephen of the robbery--"there was always some such ready to help them" (187)--there is an exchange of experience, particularly since, in the latter case, all the workers knew Stephen and held an opinion on his character; they all, in effect, had a story to tell. Yet the isolation common to middle class consumers of the novel looking for a "meaning," impedes the possibility for communicable experience. The novel form, then, interferes with its reforming impulse. Williams has written that as a whole response to ‘“Dickens left a legacy of 93,000 pounds (Feltes 6). 83 developing industrial culture, Herd_Iimee is "more a symptom of the confusion of industrial society than an under- standing, but it is a symptom that is significant and continuing" (gnitere_ehd_§eeiety 96-97). Some of the more interesting recent scholarship on the novel recognizes this confusion by locating its sources in the cultured“ Yet I think Dickens’s understanding of his culture included the knowledge that to a large extent, the "confusion" is created by the narrow selection of values enforced by those institu- tions which were founded as a consequence of the "reforming impulse." He saw the contradictions both within and among these institutions and sought an alternative that could function as a means of negotiation at the level of the whole culture. He seems almost to have realized, too, that as a formation, "Fancy" is an insufficient alternative, for it neither addresses the material incongruities between the classes, nor does the novel form encourage the kind of exchange of experience--particularly between the classes-- that Dickens finds disappearing in industrial culture. In the end, then, Herd Times is an attempt to reform that is limited by its own inherent contradictions. ‘“See Coles, Johnson, and Gallagher. Feminism and the Problem of Political Consciousness in Late Victorian Socialism: Margaret Harkness ’ 8 WW By 1900 the English labor movement had succeeded in defining itself in organizational and political terms. The Dock Strike of 1889 was the beginning of a recrudescence of trade unionism permeated by collectivist ideas spread by English socialist organizations that had formed in London between 1881 and 1883. Among the many accounts of this period in English histories there is a novel written by a nearly forgotten socialist, feminist and trade unionist, Margaret Elise Harkness (1854-1923). Her novel geerge Eeetmehte_flehderer (1905) is remarkable for its insight into the difficulties of nurturing a socialist consciousness impeded by class prejudices, theoretical ambiguity, and sexism. Harkness’s account of the Dock Strike--the central event in the novel--and the representation of her protagon- ists’ maturing political consciousness reveal that while she shared in the uneasiness of many socialists of her time concerning trade unionism as a step towards achieving so- cialism, she was at the same time resentful of socialist policy on the "Woman Question." An overview of socialist thinking on these topics helps to locate the source of Harkness’s ambivalence about English socialism in the 1880’s and 1890’s. 84 85 The organization to which Harkness belonged,"'the So- cial Democratic Federation, presented an ”official" ambiva- lence toward trade unions. SDF founder H.M. Hyndman saw the "trade union fetish" as the "chief drawback to our prog- ress.W“ Hyndman did support trade union demands for the eight hour day, but for political purposes he opposed a close alliance between the SDF and trade unions. He argued that unions were "an aristocracy of labor, who in view of the bitter struggle now drawing nearer" represented a “hin- drance to that complete organization of the workers which alone can obtain for the workers their proper control over their own labor.”” The small working class membership of the SDF also criticized the unions. John Burns, a member of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, denounced them for their neglect of the greater portion of the work force: "The bulk of labourers are ignored by the skilled workers. It is this selfish, snobbish desertion by the higher grades of the lower that makes success in many disputes impossi- ble."so Even so, in hopes of spreading socialist ideology among the workers, the Federation issued a manifesto to the unions in 1884, calling on them to join the socialist party (Tsuzuki 55). Formed in 1868, the Trades Union Congress was the ‘VKaspar 105; MacKenzie and MacKenzie Vol. I., 323, Harkness was a distant cousin and friend of Beatrice Webb. I"'Qtd. in Pierson 67. “Qtd. in Pierson 67. ”gm. in Webb and Webb 388. 86 central forum for organized labor in the 1870’s and 1880’s, but it did not respond to the SDF manifesto. The TUC was at that time permeated by an ideology of economic individualism which also dominated the Liberal Party. It had no consis- tent idea of the wage-earning classes: rather, it was com- mitted to the social and political creed of 1eieeer;teire. Until 1885, it was generally agreed that Britain’s trade unions would be an effective barrier against socialist pro- jects. Yet within a decade Ihe_Time§ proclaimed the social- ist party supreme in the TUC (Webb and Webb 374). What had happened between 1884 and 1893 was the most spectacular industrial struggle of the period--the Great Dock Strike of 1889. Events leading up to the dock strike were influenced by the SDF which was attempting to spread socialist ideas among the unskilled. Since 1886 the Feder- ation had been successful organizing mass meetings of the unemployed. In February 1886 one meeting erupted into a riot. SDF agitators Burns, Hyndman, and Henry Hyde Champion were arrested on charges of sedition. Though they were later acquitted, the trial received nationwide publicity that attracted the attention of a whole nation to SDF doc- trines (Webb and Webb 387). In November 1887, London’s Chief Commissioner of Police issued a proclamation prohib- iting meetings in Trafalgar Square. The SDF and others organized a protest march through the West End. The police, calvary, and infantry were called out to disperse the crowd. Scores of protesters were injured: three were killed. The events of that day came to be referred to as "Bloody 87 Sunday." The SDF’s agitation for free speech and the unemployed attracted a large number of unskilled workers to socialism. The trade unions had shut them out, making them powerless to negotiate for any improvements in their wages or working conditions. An 1888 article by Annie Besant in Ihe_Link--a newspaper she founded soon after the struggle for Trafalgar Square--on the appalling working conditions of the female employees at Byrant and Mays match factory, brought a new phenomenon to the plight of the unskilled workers--the in- tervention of public opinion (Webb and Webb 42). Empowered by the success of the Match Girls’ strike, SDF members Burns and Tom Mann, with the help of Benjamin Tillet, organized the Gas-Workers and General Labourers’ Union in May of 1889. They enrolled thousands of members and successfully won a slight increase in wages and an eight hour day for the gas stokers (Webb and Webb 402). The success of these two vic- tories for the unskilled influenced the dockers’ decision to strike. On the twelfth of August in 1889, a dispute over the amount of a bonus on a certain cargo brought on an impulsive strike of the dockers at the South-West India Dock in the East End of London. The dockers demanded six pence an hour, the abolition of sub-contract and piece work, extra pay for overtime, and a minimum engagement of four hours. Ben Tillet, then a secretary of a small society of tea ware- housemen that had existed since 1887, sent the demands to the employers. He summoned Mann and Burns, along with ‘-.~< 88 Champion, to help him organize the dockers. Processions of dockers went to each dock to bring more men out on strike. Stevedores, lightermen, coal porters and others came out in sympathy. The strike spread rapidly. Within three days 10,000 laborers had left work (Webb and Webb 403). The ports of London were jammed with ships unable to unload their cargo. A strike committee was formed to handle pub- licity and distribute strike relief in the form of food tickets. Each day the organizers addressed the dockers on Tower Hill and led the strikers, marching five abreast, through London. The host of orderly dockers greatly im- pressed public opinion and won many generous contributions to the strike fund. In his account of the strike, Champion described--somewhat sarcastically--the response of the public to the strikers: . . . though there was little public sympathy shown in the earlier days of the strike, as soon as it became widely known that thousands of the strikers had marched through the City without a pocket being picked or a window being broken . . . the British citizen felt he might go back to his suburban villa when his day’s work was done with full confidence that his warehouses would not be wrecked in the night, and that he could afford to follow his natural inclination and back the poor devils who were fighting with pluck, good humour, and order against overwhelming odds. (6) As E.P. Thompson further notes, the orderly strikers were 89 not ”the ’criminal classes’ of bourgeois fiction and of The Timee leading articles . . . but ’working men’" (529). Ob- servers saw for themselves that their conception of the workers was erroneous, and public support for the strike grew. When the strike was two weeks old the shortage of funds and the infusion of blackleg labor threatened to destroy it. a q... In desperation, Mann initiated a proposal that called for a general strike of all the London trades. The Gas Workers’ Union responded, but the proposal was withdrawn when a sub- stantial sum of aid arrived from the Australian dockers and the Lord Mayor of London formed the Committee of Concilia- tion, chaired by Cardinal Manning. Both events infused fresh confidence into the strikers. Five weeks after the strike began, Cardinal Manning and the Committee persuaded the employers to give the dockers what Burns referred to as "the full orb of the dockers’ tanner" (Pelling 96). The Dock, Wharf, and General Labourers’ Union was soon estab- lished, with Tillet as its full time secretary and Mann as its first president. By November 30 the union claimed 30,000 members (Webb and Webb 405). The Match Girls’, Gas Workers’, and Dockers’ strikes converted trade unionism from an individualistic to a col- lective working class movement. They led to the formation of a large number of trade unions among the unskilled work- ers: Unions were formed at all the principle ports in Eng- land; the Gas Workers’ Union enrolled tens of thousands in provincial cities: and farm laborers established unions or 90 joined existing ones. Within a year of the docker’s strike, 200,000 workers had joined trade unions (Webb and Webb 406). By 1890 it was impossible for the TUC to denounce socialism: socialist ideology had permeated the new unionism. Tensions between the unions and the socialists and the events of the Dock Strike are faithfully depicted by Hark- ness in her novel. Yet there is no mention of her role in the SDF and the strike in either socialist or trade union histories of this period.51 Harkness wrote Heetmeht, as she did all of her novels, under the male pseudonym of "John Law.” She dedicated the novel to Cardinal Manning, "with whom the author was associated during the Great Dock Strike of 1889," which suggests that she was instrumental in con- vincing Manning to intervene on behalf of the strikers.52 The dedication also claims to contain "the writer’s experi- ences in the Labour Movement, and thoughts about it.“ The protagonist of the novel is also male--the aristocrat -turn- ed- socialist George Eastmont. This double layer of "dis- guise" permits Harkness to give some of her thoughts on the labor movement with an authority she would otherwise lack as a woman in the male sphere of politics and labor unions. Kiernan Ryan has observed that defectors from the ruling classes who aligned themselves with socialism, "exercised an understandable hold over the imaginations of socialist S1The mysteries surrounding the life of Harkness have yet to be solved. I contacted a woman in London who has been working on a biography of Harkness for over a decade. There is no publication date. ”See Stafford 155 and Keating 242. 91 novelists [at the turn of the century] not least because the authors no doubt found in them ways of voicing and probing versions of their own lived predicaments and political long- ings" (7). The use of a male "disguise" and the novel form to present thoughts on political events was not unusual for women writers in the 1880’s. Brunhild de la Mott observes that the novel "was the medium for the representation of opinions that could not otherwise be expressed since women were denied positions of influence" (46). Ten years after the Dock Strike Harkness announced her reasons for leaving the socialist movement. She wrote that she had "been got at, abused and misunderstood by the people who call them- selves socialists" because "birth, sex, and temperament have prevented me from coming forward openly among those who are fighting in the labour ranks."”‘ These claims help to identify Harkness’s opinions on the movement in degree Eeetment, particularly the argument that her sex prevented her from full and equal participation. "The Woman Question" in the late 1800’s covered issues which were part of any explanation of women’s position in society and how it could be changed. Its content included ”all aspects of the relations between the sexes in the pub- lic sphere, including work and politics, and also in the private sphere, including the family, marriage and sexuali- ty" (Hunt 48). "The Woman Question was, indeed, a shorthand for all these issues and specifically dealt with the IBSee Imperie1_gredit 1. Unfortunately, Harkness does not explain what exactly those problems were. 92 questions of women’s oppression" (Hunt 48). While feminism re-garded gender as the crucial divide in society, socialism insisted that sexual equality was secondary to consider- ations of class.“’ An 1895 column in the SDF newspaper {detiee warned that "socialism deals only with the economic question and however much of any of us may speculate on the changes in sexual relations that may result from changed economic conditions, . . . they are to be nowise regarded as part of socialist teaching" (qtd. in Hunt 49). The SDF mar- ginalized the issues embodied in the Woman Question for fear that they would divert attention from economic questions. Historian Karen Hunt points out that socialist under- standing of the Woman Question rested on Engel’s The_Qrigih WW. published in English in 1902, and most particularly on August Babel’s Hemeh_ender_§eeieiiem, first published in 1879 (50). Both argued that the Woman Question could only be resolved under a socialist society and therefore women should join with the workers in the fight against capitalism (Hunt 50-51). Babel’s work was more widely read than Engels’s.”’ It paradoxically both marginalized women within socialist con- cerns and drew women more firmly into the socialist cause (Hunt 51). He emphasized that freedom for women was indeed necessary but had to wait until after the revolution. There was, then, an almost complete absence of any developed 5"The issue is still relevant a century later. See MacKinnon’s essay from the early 1980’s. 5""The English translation was published in 1885. 93 understanding of women’s oppression within socialist ideolo- gy. As Hunt points out, "Socialist theory both recognized and then effectively shelved the Question." (54). Individuals in the Federation with a wide range of views on the Question developed their ideas in the columns of Jgetiee and the monthly, Seeiei_pemeeret. Among the more vociferous columnists was Belfort Bax who, for example, argued that women were the privileged sex, that men were the victims of "legalized tyranny and inequality and one could therefore understand "sporadic outbursts of brutality against wives" (leetiee, 37 July 1895, qtd. in Hunt 51). In no way did Bax represent official SDF policy on the WOman Question--it had none--but these misogynist views and oth- ers, as well as the lack of any effective counter-arguments, distanced women and sympathetic men from socialism (Hunt 55). There is a notable exception to the marginalization of the Woman Question among socialist discourse. Eleanor Marx, a friend of Harkness’s, published--along with Edward Aveling--an essay on the topic in 1887. She presents a counter argument Hunt finds lacking in the 1880’s and 1890’s. The_flemeh_gheetien posits that the liberation of women is central to the struggle for a socialist society, but contemporary efforts to improve women’s status miss a fundamental fact in their thinking; that is, the woman ques- tion is a "question of economics," that those "who attack the present treatment of women without seeking for the cause of this in the economics of our latter-day society are like 94 doctors who treat a local affection without inquiring into the general bodily health" (12-13). Marx emphasizes the inequality of marriage under capitalism, which is "based upon commercialism" (17). Dowries, child-rearing, divorce laws, prostitution, Victorian prudery concerning sex, are all grounded in the unequal distribution of surplus value. Another aspect of the pamphlet that makes it unique is the description of what a woman’s life will be under socialism. While other writers on the question simply say there would be improved conditions for women, Marx sees the inevitable results of a socialist society as independence for women, educational opportunities, the freedom to engage in "art or science, or teaching or writing, or amusement in any form," and the disappearance of prostitution (27). However, with the exception of Eleanor Marx, the eco- nomic definition of socialism tended to bury the Woman Question within the larger issues of class. This, of course, had an adverse effect on the politicization of women within the socialist movement. In the pages of geetiee there emerged a stereotype of women who would, presumably, "consider a man a terrible bore who spoke to them on poli- tics. The delight of women is to gossip about other people, and a thousand other frivolous things" (7 October 1893 qtd. in Hunt 56). As Hunt notes, the stereotype becomes more vicious once it leaves the realm of apathy. One column in inetiee characterized women as "the greatest sufferers by the present system" because "they are the greatest sinners . . . They dominate the men, and make cowards and blacklegs 95 of them" (qtd. in Hunt 57). Women were characterized as either wives or mothers of socialists; proletarian women were all but invisible in the economic theory of the SDF. Such attitudes made it difficult for the SDF to "make” women socialists or to retain the ones it had. Under these conditions Harkness (like Eleanor Marx) argued for the centralization of feminist concerns in the socialist agenda. geerge_Eeetheht makes a case for gender as a cultural construction--as is class--and its inclusion into current socialist thinking. Due to the "disguising" of her gender that cultural circumstances required, Harkness’s feminist argument is subtle, calling for an examination of the novel’s form. The "evolution" of Eastmont’s conscious- ness is represented through Harkness’ guarded use of natu- ralism, a genre that was controversial and derided by bour- geois literary critics for its "godlessness, atheism, pros- titution, and obscenity."“’ As Gerd Bjorhovde points out, for a woman to write naturalistic novels was unusual and daring: romance was considered the proper sphere for women writers, where as realism was the domain of males (67-68). But Harkness was a great admirer of Zola’s as well as his first English disciple. Her considerable experience as a social worker in the East End gave her material for her early novels, h_§ity_§irl and get_gt_flerh. In those novels, but to a much lesser extent in Eeetheht, heredity and “See Hynes 260. 96 environment determine her characters’ consciousness. This basic naturalistic idea does, however, take an historical and therefore anti-naturalistic shape in Eastmont, as will become clear in the discussion of the novel’s conclusion. Eastmont’s eventual realization of the importance of the Woman Question to socialist ideology comes after he has learned from a futile desire to become a hero of the people, his relationships with his working class wife and a female socialist colleague, and the recognition of his own class prejudices. Thus he eventually learns that biological limits are secondary to material limits. This knowledge, Eleanor Marx knew, is crucial to an understanding of women’s present position in society. Eileen Sypher has called Eastmont a literary type, an aristocrat turned man-of-the-people (17). Socialist organi- zations in England certainly had their share of such men. Hyndman, Champion and Morris were aristocratic or upper-mid- dle class.”’ It is possible that Harkness modelled Eastmont’s background on Champion’s, with whom she worked closely until the end of the 1880’ s.” Kiernan Ryan has noted in his discussion of the ruling-class rebel in fiction that nowhere were . . . estrangements and anxieties more sharply felt than by those who defected from 57See Thompson on Morris, Tsuzuki on Hyndman, and Pierson 179-190 on Champion. 58See Kaspar 106 . 97 the ruling classes, not only to help forge a jus- ter socialist society, but to invest their lives with a feeling of purpose and worth, which their complicity in the injustice of capitalist society had hitherto denied them. (7) The narrative problem in the novel focuses on Eastmont’s desire to become "one of the people" (5). Deeply affected by the violence he witnesses and participates in as a sol- dier in Africa, Eastmont returns with anti-imperialist stir- rings he nourishes by reading economics, including Marx and Henry George’s seminal work £regreee_ehd_£eyerty (1879), which argues for a single tax on rents (14).”’ From his studies Eastmont concludes that "a savior of the masses was wanted, someone who would go amongst them, rouse them out of their apathy and ignorance, and give them hope" (15). This attempt to become conscious of the conflict and fight it out is an essential step in the politicization of any socialist, but it is especially crucial for Eastmont who, as an aristo- crat, does not participate in the relations of production. Eastmont is not a capitalist: he is a landed aristocrat twice removed from the working class. He needs to acquire the discourse of surplus value and land nationalization in order to articulate revolutionary ideas on behalf of the workers. But before he can raise class consciousness in 59'George’s influence on English socialism cannot be overestimated. See: Webb and Webb 375-376; Callaghan 8-10; Beer 242-245. 98 them, he needs, as the narrative makes clear, further work on his own. Eastmont comes to see himself as the hero who will lead the revolution, a desire premature in its assump- tion that his consciousness is easily transformable and he can therefore become a successful agent within the socialist agenda. Much of the first half of the novel describes Eastmont’s efforts of deeleeeemeht. He marries a working class woman, dresses so it is difficult to "class" him (2), and moves into a small flat in a working class section of London. Yet while his lifestyle and appearance are deliber- ate repudiations of his class and attempts to join the community of socialists, he embraces individualistic images of himself as the people’s hero. The beginning of the narrative explores the dialectic between Eastmont as an individual and as a hero. Harkness locates the nodal points of the conflict in these actions where they are the most intense and typical of the class rebel. He is, for example, a popular speaker at rallies for the unemployed. After one meeting some of the workers pick him up and carry him home on their shoulders while the band plays "See the Conquering Hero Comes" (39). Eastmont feels humiliated: "The enthusi- asm of the mob left him cold, and he felt no sympathy or compassion for the men who were making him a laughing-stock" (39). Later Eastmont scolds himself for not recognizing at the time the similarity between his position and that of an earlier "hero of the people": thm‘” - e - 99 He watched the gas lights, and his thoughts went back to the One who had been meek and lowly, sit- ting on an ass, while little children shouted ho- sannas beside Him, and the common people followed him to Jerusalem. Had not all the great movements been received with ridicule and contempt? (39) His image of himself as the adored leader of the workers shows Eastmont interpreting the event in terms of his own class position. It is not what he said at the rally to encourage the workers that he reflects on, but the similari- ties between himself and Jesus. The passage suggests his thinking does not dare penetrate the reality of his situa- tion: his deeieeeeheht is humiliating for him, but the deliberate Christian imagery shows Eastmont striving for a meaningful relationship to that "objective" reality. The image functions to allow him to come to temporary terms with his humiliation. In the passage above Harkness critiques Eastmont for his individualistic desire for honor, an impulse that femi- nists discouraged. Philippa Levine’s extensive research on the Woman Question reveals that "the feminist movement it- self seemed often to shy away from the creation of giants, emphasizing a more communal and collective approach to its affairs in preference to revering an individual’s catalytic charisma" (5). It is possible, then, that the passage has a feminist subtext that is a reaction to the patriarchal lead- ership of the SDF whose expectations of glory kept Harkness 100 and other socialist women from making a greater contribution to the movement. One may also wonder how closely Eastmont’s self-heroizing reflects Hyndman’s character as the leader of the SDF. His opportunism and political ambitions were the cause of much factionalism within the SDF that resulted in the resignation of some of its most effective members.60 There is some evidence that Harkness herself left the SDF after an argument between Hyndman and Champion."1 Her claim that she was misunderstood by socialists because of her gender could very well have been in part based on Hyndman’s opinion that there heyer will be a time "when women will have the same rights as men" (leetiee, 5 April 1884 qtd. in Hunt 53). Like Hyndman and others in the SDF who dismissed the Woman Question as marginal to economic concerns, Eastmont has no initial consciousness of its relevance to his own politicization. He marries a "working class" woman because, as he explains to his friend Cardinal Lorraine, "I am so far off from the People . . . I have tried to be of them, and I have felt all the time so different . . . I want to be one of them, that is why I have done it" (5). These reasons are clearly naive and ill-conceived. First of all, Julia is the daughter of a small farmer in Essex. Class determination in the nineteenth century was patriarchal: marriage to her “See Thompson 331-3 65 . 61See Kaspar 106. 101 could not make Eastmont working class. Secondly, Julia’s father is petty bourgeois, not proletarian. Eastmont has little understanding of class distinctions beyond a general notion of the oppressors and the oppressed. Even this understanding does not carry over into the realm of gender. The chapters focusing on Eastmont’s treatment of Julia can be interpreted in light of Eleanor Marx’s insistence that under socialism there will "be no love [between husband and wife] without understanding" (28). Eastmont’s domestic life is clearly patriarchal. He frequently calls his mar- riage an ”experiment," a way to get to know the "People" (5). ”Experiment" denotes observation and interest, meaning that Eastmont can learn something from Julia about the "People." Yet his treatment of her reveals that he expects her to learn from him. Her housekeeping habits, for in- stance, do not meet the requirements of his fastidiousness. He becomes annoyed with her failure to care for his clothes as well as his army valet once did (29). In despair he thinks how when they were married he had hoped Julia "would drop the peculiarities she shared with the People, and copy him" (25). While Eastmont expects Julia to make a home for him by creating an atmosphere of domestic comfort, a haven from the pressures from his political activities, she is suspended among four social worlds and four sets of class ‘Values and obligations, a position that denies her agency in the marriage and silences her pleas for understanding. For Eastmont, Julia should be both a representative of 102 the "People" from whom Eastmont can learn, and the angel of his hearth, the latter of which was a dominant nineteenth century bourgeois patriarchal notion. Her position is compounded by her husband’s aristocratic background, from which she expects to benefit socially. Not surprisingly, she does not understand Eastmont’s socialism, having not had the benefit of any attempts of politicization from him. Her own attitudes toward the workers could have been cited as proof of Marx’s and Engels’s maxim that the lower middle class is fearful of becoming proletariat and is therefore politically conservative (Henifieete 19). Julia tells the socialist Mary Cameron: "I know what the working class is . . . for father had two men working for him, and I’d a woman to help with the washing. The working class is un- grateful and hidle" (53). Julia’s marriage across class boundaries give her neither the social status she expects nor the consciousness- raising Eastmont and Mary Cameron could have provided her. Neglected by Eastmont and his socialist colleagues, Julia undergoes a despair and boredom she relieves by taking opium. She is ignorant of the potency of her "drops," but she does know that she is--as she tells Eastmont who thinks the stupor in which he finds her is caused by drinking-- "wretched and miserable" (62). Her words arouse only fur- ther disgust in Eastmont who silences her by walking away and using the incident to devote himself further to the "People" (64). The irony of the scene is apparent. As an 103 abstraction of the "People" Julia serves Eastmont’s purpos- es, but as an individual pleading for understanding, she is merely an annoyance. Julia dies of an accidental overdose while Eastmont is serving a two week sentence for inciting a riot among the unemployed. (The trial is based on the Hyndman-Champion- Burns trial mentioned above.) Over her grave, Eastmont re- sorts to symbolizing when he again is unable to penetrate the reality of his agency in his botched marriage to Julia. Using the cliched rhetoric of the romantic lover, the narra- tion reports Eastmont’s thoughts as he stands beside Julia’s grave: ”Having given up all that made life worth living, and lost poor Julia, he had nothing now left but his work" (110). Kiernan Ryan has argued that at Julia’s death "East- mont’s realization of his callous stupidity" is the point in which he begins to lose confidence in himself as the "’sav- ior of the masses’" (25). However, the language in this passage also has comic undertones. Presumably, "everything that made life worth living" was his army commission, his social status, and other privileges of class. His wife is an afterthought, placed in a parenthetical clause. Eastmont uses Julia’s death as an occasion to renew his commitment to socialism, as he did when he discovered her "drunk." He takes Julia’s wedding ring, places it on his finger, and declares, "with this ring I wed myself to the People" (112). Given the contributory cause of Julia’s death--Eastmont’s selfishness and neglect--this gesture borders on 104 sentimentality based on his inability to realize how he has ruined his marriage. He still insists on seeing himself as the hero of the working class at the moment he should be questioning his motives. This need to symbolize underscores Eastmont’s desire to transcend the reality of Julia’s death.“2 Wearing the ring is an effort to exert some con- trol in a situation where it should be clear to him that he has very little. This symbolizing is characterized by its ahistorical, metaphysical way of viewing the world. It has no relevance to Eastmont’s situation. If Julia’s death has indeed undermined his confidence, he quickly denies his own agency in it and recovers his self-assurance. The domestic narrative in the first half of the novel, then, is significant for the absence in Eastmont’s socialism of any consideration of gender as a political construct. It is also revealing for the treatment of Julia as a petty bourgeois who marries "above her station" and hopes for the rewards of her newly acquired social position. Her death, one may think, is an indication that Harkness--like Gaskell- is driving home the message of "stay in your place" for the lower classes.‘63 However, I would argue that Harkness’s ”See G.V. Plekhanov in Thseh, ed. Angel Flores (New York: Haskell House, 1966). "The history of literature shows that man has always used one or the other of these means [symbolism or realism] to transcend a particular reality. He employs the first (i.e. symbolism) when he is unable to grasp the meaning of that reality, or when he cannot accept the conclusion to which the development of that reality leads. He resorts to symbols when he cannot solve difficult, sometimes insoluble problems." “See my chapter on Gaskell. Jameson argues that Gissing used ideologemes to "contain his working class characters." See his Eoiitieei Uhcohsciohs 185-205. 105 socialist feminism would not permit such a message. It seems Harkness wanted to point to the flaws of a socialist consciousness when it is nurtured primarily on abstraction and played out within a fiercely patriarchal society. These flaws were not peculiar to socialist ideology, however. In the feminist movement of the time there was some debate over the class/gender analogy, but overall the movement’s middle class origins remained entrenched. If, as mentioned earli- er, the socialists’ stereotype of women was confined to wives and mothers of socialists, the feminists’ idea of the working classes was not much more developed.“’ The charac- ter of Mary Cameron illustrates that Harkness was able to penetrate the shortcomings in both ideologies to which she was committed, for Cameron is a single, independent social- ist who buys into the image of Eastmont-as-hero and derides Julia for her "ignorance” and "self-absorption" (94). Nineteenth-century historians have separated two strains of feminist thought: "bourgeois feminism" and "so- cialist feminism.W“ Simply, bourgeois feminists stressed the importance of women’s education, property rights of married women, and professional opportunities for women, while socialist feminists were active in areas such as the organization of women’s trade unions. A common criticism of bourgeois feminism by socialists--feminist and “See Levine 160 . ‘“See Levine 6-7 for references to historians who divide late nineteenth-century into these camps. 106 non-feminist--was its disregard of the concerns of working class women. There is some disagreement on this, however. Jane Marcus has asserted that "the women who won the vote and the eight-hour day were sisters and allies" (744). Late Victorian feminism occasionally formed a wide understanding of female subjugation. In Harkness’s time, one need only remember Annie Besant’s agitation for the Match Girls. Still, the differences between middle class and working class women’s lives were wide enough for there to be misun- derstandings, and in the case of Mary Cameron, some hypocri- sy. The novel does not suggest that Cameron is feminist although she has benefitted from the emerging options and opportunities available to single women in the 1880’s. She supports herself through clerical work and lives in a build- ing that houses unmarried women.“’ Like Harkness, Cameron had done some social work in the East End, an experience that led to her conversion to socialism (43). As we shall see, Cameron is not immune to the sexism within socialism, but she herself is unaware of it--so unaware that she, too, makes no effort to understand Julia. One of the primary objectives of the SDF and the Socialist League was to "make socialists:" Cameron’s failure to create a "sisterhood" with Julia reveals an insufficient socialist and feminist con- sciousness . ‘7 “See Nord for a discussion of Cameron as a "new liter- ary type." 67See Levine 160: ". . . division along class lines, with its inevitable experiential differentiation, was the cause of one of the most deeply felt rifts within the nine- teenth-century women’s movement." 107 Although I am arguing that Harkness is more sympathetic toward Julia than Cameron, Harkness’s disillusion with socialism is less subtle in the scenes that show Cameron in meetings of the socialist executive committee. These are powerful in their critique of her male colleagues’ assump- tions about femininity. During these meetings Eastmont and the others freely voice their views but "Mary Cameron was silent. She had not been asked to give her opinion, and her silences were accepted as consent, the discussion going on without anyone calling on her to take part in it" (58). The denial of Cameron’s agency in the socialist organization was, as mentioned earlier, a practice within the SDF that was incongruous with its socialist theory. In 1893 SDF mem- ber Ellen Batten questioned the organization’s sincerity in trying to recruit women members "when those women who do break the bondage of custom and join the socialists are thought and spoken of contemptuously . . .not only will they not join, but the few who have done so . . . would be in- clined to abandon socialism in disgust at the inconsistencies between its preaching and practice" (due; tiee, 30 December 1893, qtd. in Hunt 58). Many male socialists believed that economic change would influence only women’s surface behavior, that their essential feminine characteristics were beyond influence (Hunt 61). This assumption justified the sexual division of labor within the SDF. Essentialist ideology is represented in the novel by the Reverend Podmore, a Fabian who has 108 expectations of marriage with Mary Cameron. Eastmont finds him reading Patrick Geddes’s The_Exelhtien_er_§ex (41), a Darwinian attempt to show how the social position of women accorded with a vast evolutionary design. Jill Conway has demonstrated how Geddes’s work perpetuates stereotypes of femininity by positing that sex roles are encoded in even the lowest forms of life: neither political nor technologi- cal change could alter the "temperaments" of the sexes (144). Briefly, Geddes argued that the biologically passive female and the active male temperaments should be maintain- ed. Women, he believed, are useful in politics and can help redirect society to a cooperative one as long as their in- volvement preserves separate sex roles "appropriate" to the female temperament (Conway 145). Cameron’s role in the so- cialist organization is supportive: she types letters for Eastmont and encourages the heroic image he has of himself (115). Her disappearance from the second half of the novel attests to the pervasiveness and strength of cultural notions of femininity that were obstacles to her political practice. The first half of the novel, then, offers two powerful criticisms of late nineteenth-century socialism: the belief that one could align oneself with the workers--even "become" one of them--as a solution to one’s alienation from the means of production, and the marginalization of women within its organizations. Fredric Jameson has noted that the nineteenth-century ideological concept of populism was ”a 109 kind of general grouping of the poor and ’underprivileged’ of all kinds, from which one can recoil in revulsion, but to which one can also . . . nostalgically ’return’ as to some telluric source of strength" (189). As we have seen, each time Eastmont encounters a domestic problem he renews his commitment to "the People." When he recoils from his "work- ing class” wife, he turns to his idea of "the People" for strength. Populism is the device that structures the novel, and it becomes conscious of itself as the narration de- scribes the lengths Eastmont goes to become one of “the People.” The gap between theory and practice is also evi- dent in the socialists’ failure to recognize gender as a concrete political construct. Harkness’s argument with socialist thinking on the Woman Question is sustained throughout much of the first half of the novel. In the second half, however, she seems to align herself with the SDF’s distrust of unionization as a "stepping stone" to socialism. The middle of the novel recreates the events of the Dock Strike mentioned earlier. Here we have the opportunity to juxtapose Harkness’s "thoughts about it” with those of Champion who wrote a pamphlet published in 1890 praising the strike as a watershed in labor politics. The comparison reveals that Harkness, who had the advantage of a greater hindsight, is not as enthusiastic about the meaning of the strike. In this section of the narrative she seems to be- come less critical of Eastmont, appreciating his ‘1» ~ A 110 indefatigable efforts during the strike, while questioning if it did indeed prove that the working classes were beginning to realize their strength and act for themselves. Champion and Harkness differ on two related points: the significance of the role established trade unions played in the strike, and the intervention of the Conciliation Committee that helped resolve it. We have seen how the SDF distrusted established trade unions for their exclusivity. Champion acknowledges in his pamphlet that the "aristocracy of labour" proves that "prej- udice and selfishness are among the few things not monopo- lized by ’the classes’" (10-11), and he criticizes the unions for withholding their support of the strike until they were certain public opinion was on the Docker’s side (22). Still, he believed the strike changed the attitude of the established unions toward the unskilled workers: " . . . a conviction has taken root that their superior position does not give them the right to look down on their less fortunate brethren, but carries with it the duty of assisting and supporting the unskilled labourer" (11). Although Champion may seem ambivalent about the unions, he calls their "new attitude" a "fact" (11), which suggests he is hopeful for a greater solidarity among the workers. Harkness, on the other hand, has Eastmont being suspi- cious of the new unionism. After the strike his socialist organization meets for the last time. Charleston, the leader of the group, is resigning to work for the new 111 unions, and others leave to pursue reforms through Parliament. Eastmont will not work for the unions because he "has no faith in Trades Unionism as a panacea for the social evils of to-day" (165). His lack of enthusiasm stems from an awareness of the strength of the capitalists who are more conscious of their own power "when they sink personal feelings and interests for the good of their class" (163). Charleston and others seem to have forgotten that a contrib- uting cause of the dockers’ victory was due to the lateness of the dock owners’ combining against the strike. Subse- quent effective lock-outs support Eastmont’s insight."a For Eastmont the new unionism means that "some thousands of working men would join the labour aristocracy, and after- wards look down at their less fortunate brethren. He won- dered "how . . . socialists could be content with such things" (183). In these passages and others Harkness could be in agreement with the English Marxist orthodox beliefs on trade unionism. From her sixteen-year perspective, she knew the Dockers’ Union opposed the idea of a general union, which was the practical expression of the class solidarity that Champion had hoped for. The new unionism did lapse into the old unionism applied to unskilled labor (Tsuzuki 87). As Champion recounts the stages of the strike in his pamphlet he is silent on what the intervention of the “See Pelling for a discussion of the effects of the Taft-Vale Case in 1901. 112 Committee of Conciliation meant for the working class movement. Harkness evidently shared Champion’s respect for Cardinal Manning, but she seems to suggest some regret in feeling compelled to get him involved in ending the strike. In the novel Eastmont goes to the Cardinal because he fears the consequences of the strike committee’s impulsive demands for a general strike, particularly when the Gas Workers’ Union agrees to stop work and leave London in darkness (144). The show of force on "Bloody Sunday" has left a clear impression on Eastmont. Walking to the Cardinal’s, he reflects on his last visit: " . . . he had said then that the workers were beginning to learn their strength, and had talked of force. He had learnt since by painful experience their impotence" (144). The shortage of relief funds and the desperate effort of the leaders to sustain the strike have left Eastmont with little hope for an immediate genuine working class revolution. The Committee’s intervention, Eastmont thinks, means that the workers are not "strong enough to win a battle by themselves, and the ’glorious victory,’ as Charleston called it, and only been won with the assistance of the classes" (151). Eastmont’s thinking is a bit curious when one remembers that despite his desire to become like the workers, he is not one of them--indeed he is one of the "classes" assisting them. Eastmont will eventually acknowledge the limitations of his class consciousness, but here he seems to echo Engels’s insistence that any working class movement must have a dietihet working are -. - 113 class character free from bourgeois influence (Hritieh Labour 18) - It is difficult to determine how close these are to Harkness’s views on the strike. Contemporary historians almost unanimously agree that the dockers’ victory was a milestone in British Labour history.” Harkness must have been caught up in the initial excitement over the strike and hoped more would come of it. There are two facts about the strike that she does not mention in the novel that suggest a distance of sixteen years can also be an impediment to "memory." The dockers’ struggle was the first to arrest the activity of a whole community--the docks were crammed with idle ships during two months in the summer. Second, the strike marked the period in which ideological thinking re- turned to the trade union movement. The socialist influence on the movement was considerable.70 Perhaps Harkness’s disillusion with the SDF prevented her from admitting the degree of its influence. By 1905 it was the most estab- lished socialist organization in Britain, although as we have seen, its ”policy" on the Woman Question had not changed from the late 1880’s. I would speculate that Harkness left the movement to find a way to sustain her commitment to social reform and to come to terms with the restraints of her class and gender. ”See Thompson, Beer, and Pierson. 7oSee Webb and Webb 375. 114 There are some unsubstantiated claims that she became a Salvationist.71 Three of her novels--A_Qity_§ir1(1887), QaDLAID_LQh§ (1889): and A_QBIQ§§L§_RIQmi§§ (1921)--show that she greatly admired the work, if not the religion, of the Army. At first it may seem that the change from social- ist to salvationist is a curious one until one realizes that the Army actually practiced sexual equality and it eschewed armchair theorizing, political bickering, and factional- ism.72 Its "soldiers" worked together in the East End to help the poor by providing food, clothing, encouragement, and employment. Whether or not Harkness actually did become a salvationist, the conclusion of geerge_Eeetmeht strongly suggests that her experiences in the labor movement at the very least taught her the limits of what any committed individual can accomplish within the constraints of her historical moment. With the break-up of the socialist organization, East- mont searches for a course of action that would allow him to study the "Land Question." Socialist policy included the nationalization of the land as well as the means of produc- tion." Designated to inherit his grandfather’s Irish es- tate, Eastmont wants to prepare himself for the responsi- bility while still retaining his commitment to socialism. 71See Mackenzie and Mackenzie 46-47. ‘nSee Harkness’s gepteih_hehe. 73See Tsuzuki 41 for a discussion of the original and revised SDF policy. 115 In the process he begins to see his role as reformer rather than revolutionary, having learned from the strike that the workers are not yet ready to make their own revolution. He spends a year in Australia where he supports himself as an accountant on a land settlement and later as a journalist. The former teaches him the difficulty of creating a class- less community when hierarchies are easily formed, and the latter the limitations of the Labour Party in Australia’s Parliament. In a letter to Podmore he admits that he is not interested in ”general political questions" but has come to see that the Woman Question is central to socialism: "The Woman Question I no longer look upon as a side issue, for I have learnt how fatal the ignorance of women is to the Labour Movement. This generation of women seems to be hope- less: but the next?“ (219-220). Actual experience in the labor colony seems to have taught Eastmont that there is important work to do in the present in anticipation of a socialist future, most importantly the politicization and education of women. Eastmont’s Hehderjehr ends when he receives word his grandfather is dead. Before leaving Australia, Eastmont envisions a socialist enclave whereby he would slowly wean the workers from the competitive to the cooperative method of acquiring and distributing the necessities of existence and turn the management of the land over to them (239). Eastmont seems to have found a way to reconcile his class position with his desire for a new society. His political 116 longings are still intact, as well as his need to be the prime mover in any socialist scheme. Empowered by his matured vision of an enterprise to "make" socialists--men and women--he ponders what he has learned from his expe- riences: Above convention, through caste ran the great principles of civilization--love, faithfulness, self-sacrifice. He had learnt to see in men and women one great family, with the same desires and affections, if different interests. They all sprang from the same source, and were going where? Where? (240) Eastmont’s hard-earned realization that it is impossi- ble for him to become one of "the People" is grounded in his recognition of the power of caste, which he finally concedes affects him (218). Both Podmore and Cardinal Lorraine warn him of this early in the narrative, but it is essential to Eastmont’s maturation that he find out for himself. There is an interesting use of naturalism in the novel that makes it possible to lay bare Harkness’s self conscious employment of the genre as means to reconcile the individual and the collective, a gesture that she was striving for since the publication of A_Qity_§ir1 in 1887. Today, if Harkness is remembered at all, it is usually in connection to a letter she received from Engels regarding A_§ity_§iri. In it Engels gently criticizes Harkness for representing the working class as a passive mass, "unable to 117 help itself and not even [making] any attempt to . . . help itself. All attempts to drag it out of its torpid misery come from without, from above""’ This omission, Engels argued, was not true to the historical realities of the 1880’s. Harkness’s subsequent novels respond to Engels by representing the workers agitating, marching, and preaching socialism. John Goode has written an excellent article that makes a strong case for Harkness as a some-time writer of ”socialist novels" that account for the multi-voices making history (61). fieerge_£eetheht is a special case, for here she experiments with Engels’s suggestion by writing about the politicization of one who from a privileged position offers his help to the workers. In doing so, Harkness had to call into question the naturalistic concept of biological determinism in order to sustain Eastmont’s socialist ideal- ism. There are conflicting claims about Harkness as a writer of realistic or naturalistic novels. Both points of view center on Engels’s letter. While Goode notes that she took the letter to heart and produced a new form of the novel, Ingrid von Rosenberg claims that Harkness "did not follow Engels’s advice . . . she never depicted workers who were active in the labour movement. Instead she went on drawing grim pictures of the down-trodden, proving her faith in naturalism’s power of persuasion" (160). Rosenberg also 7‘In W. ed George J - Becker 484. 118 argues that naturalism is absent from geerge_Eeetment be- cause the protagonist’s stages of disillusionment ”are more marked by theoretical discussions and intellectual ‘in- sights’ than by living experience of working-class reality” (156). Even though Goode does not analyze fieerge_£eetment in his essay, his insight into the other novels and their historical periods makes his argument more convincing than Rosenberg’s. I would also argue that the novel is a narra- tive about the limitations of naturalism as a means of de- picting the possibility for individual and societal change. By insisting on the influence of heredity as a determining force in the individual, naturalism can not account for the conscious and sometimes successful efforts to overcome both biological and environmental factors in order to sustain a belief in the yet-to-be. As Jameson observes, "Naturalism is a reaction against enthusiasm, or in more general terms, against any intellectual transcendence of the empirical present itself" (367). The state of Eastmont’s consciousness at the conclusion of the novel is a combination of social determinism and idealism that renders naturalism as powerful but ultimately inadequate to the historical realities of the narrative. Eastmont’s utopian vision, qualified to account for his individual needs, solves the problems of his deeieeeemeht by coming to terms with his heredity and environment, and his commitment to the workers’ cause. Thus he uses the advan- tage of being a landowner in order to see for himself how 119 socialism can work on a small scale and to prepare the wor- kers for the greater change ahead. He has found a way to make his historical moment matter by doing something useful in the present while at the same time sustaining hope for the future. The "science" of naturalism does not allow for the utopian gesture, and I would argue that Harkness makes a subtle suggestion that the utopian narrative is more appro- priate to a socialist consciousness freed from individual desires of heroism and unreal expectations. By locating the inadequacies of naturalistic narrative, Harkness prepares the way for an emerging story that is in the process of being written. In the novel it is history rather than nature which constitutes the privileged object of human knowledge. Harkness moves beyond Zola in the novel by developing Eastmont into an imaginative participant in the history- making process rather than locating him as an observing outsider. The narration, too, becomes less a documentary and more of a speculation. Zola’s "The Experimental Novel" (1885) asserts that the novelist should simply "present data as he has observed them, determine the point of departure, and . . . set the characters in motion in order to show that the series of events therein will be those demanded by the determinism of the phenomena under study" (166). The ques- tion that completes Eastmont’s story--"Where?"--is unanswer- able in the present, but still hopeful in tone. Eastmont had been thinking about the "Land Question" since his 120 reading of Henry George, and had worked out his ideas care- fully, unlike his impetuous actions to make himself into one of "the people.” "Where?” is Harkness’s refusal to fold everything back into nature. Instead she allows her thesis to develop on its own rather than sustaining it according to the principle of biological determinism. Significantly, the Dock Strike is the point at which Eastmont ceases to create symbols in order to construct some meaning out of events over which he has little control. The spontaneous working- class solidarity of the strike must have shown Harkness, as it does Eastmont, that the world is not merely natural but also historical, and therefore under the right conditions, subject to radical change. These conditions would include, Harkness hoped, less reliance on emphasizing trade unionism as a stepping stone towards socialism, and the rethinking of class conflict in terms of sexual differentiation and the Woman Question. I have my doubts that Harkness ever let her radicalism drop away, as some speculate.75 She does not reject so- cialism in fieerge_£eetheht; she assesses her historical mo- ment perceptively, and keeps her own eyes open to the fu- ture. Her two dominant "thoughts about the labor movement" in the novel attest to the former, and her depiction of a maturing revolutionary consciousness uncovers a problem IESypher argues that Harkness’s "conservative readers" were the source of "conservatism" in her novels (24), and Goode claims her politics were "confused" (64). 121 still central to Western Marxist ideology: how can one be a successful agent within a socialist agenda if one’s identity is fractured, if one is abused because of "birth, sex, and temperament”? We can surmise that Harkness found the answer to her dilemma in the hope of a collective unity that has transcended class and gender consciousness. The Struggle for Hegemony in W. An historian has claimed that the Dock Strike of 1889 "marked the beginning of the end of any semblance of social harmony within England" (Checkland 207). By the early twen- tieth century working-class consciousness had matured to the point where the middle class was experiencing the same level of anxiety over the strength of the workers that it had during the Chartist movement seventy years before. This fear stemmed, in part, from both the Reform Act of 1884 which made the working class numerically dominant among the electorate, and the creation of an Independent Labour Party in 1893 which sought to detach the workers from Liberalism. Although the SDF continued to separate itself from trade unionism in order to focus on socialist aims, the politici- zation of the labor movement increased through socialist publications such as Blatchford’s Hriteih_ter_the_flritieh (1900-1902) and the Qierieh, a newspaper in which socialism and independent labor politics found a clear expression (Beer 307). In addition, SDF Socialist Vans reached those workers not directly affected by urban or industrial prob- lems. The diffusion of socialist ideas was having an ef- fect, enough for a conservative newspaper in 1903 to warn its readers that "a new Chartist movement was in the course of formation" (Beer 323). Middle-class response to a maturing working-class 122 123 consciousness took on many forms. Politically, an appeal to the populace was found to be necessary in campaigns. The Tories especially were successful in reaching the conserva- tive working man, instilling in him a pride in the empire along with a fear of collectivism and socialism (Checkland 165). A debate over free trade dominated politics in the first decade of the century. The Liberal victory in 1906 was due to the reaffirmation of free trade, a "pillar of the anti-collectivist temple" (Checkland 165). Tories and Liberals had more in common than their fear of socialism: both parties were armed with the ideology of the "new" eco- nomics Alfred Marshall called "The Economics of Chivalry." By 1880 the political economy of Adam Smith was no longer the sole antithesis to Socialist ideology. Cambridge economist Alfred Marshall (1842-1924) developed a theory of economics--based on principles of political economy--that sought to "humanize" the dismal science. Marshall first used the phrase "economic chivalry" in 1883, the year his Principlee_ef_Eeenemiee was published- The Principles introduced the idea of economic chivalry as a curb on finan- cial speculation and manipulation. Marshall claimed that economic chivalry expressed the devotion of the rich to the public welfare, and would help turn "the resources of the rich high account in the service of the poor," thus removing "the worst evils of poverty from the land" (Eriheipiee 719). Victorian historian Gertrude Himmelfarb has observed that the most remarkable aspect of Marshall’s economics was "the 124 rapidity with which the new ideas were assimilated into the culture” (280). By 1907 when the Eeenemie_deerhe1 published his "Social Possibilities of Economic Chivalry," Marshall’s ideas were already well known in bourgeois culture and pre- valent in anti-collectivist sentiments within the working classes. Marshall’s economics were a response to Socialist ideas that seemed to him and to much of the middle class to be increasing their hold on the workers. While he admitted in "Social Possibilities" that there was "dissatisfaction" with the ”existing distribution of wealth," Marshall warned against adopting the measures of "utopian schemers . . . who imply . . . that, if wealth were equally divided, everyone would have access to means of comfort, refinement, and even luxury which are far out of the reach of any of the working classes at present" (328). He argued (feebly) that since artisans would lose income if there were any equal distribu- tion of wealth, all workers would not benefit from "Utopian" ideas. Marshall’s ”alternative" to socialism was based on his belief in the "latent chivalry in business life” which would emerge if it were sought out and honored ”as men honoured the medieval chivalry of war" (330). This chivalry would include a "public spirit," a "delight in doing noble and difficult things," and "succouring those who need a helping hand" (330). Some measures that Marshall envisioned included more state activity for social ameliorations that were not fully 125 within the range of private effort. But, he makes clear, these measures should fall far short of the kind of "vast extension of State activities which is desired by Collectiv- ists” (Social Possibilities" 333). Examples of "acceptable" state enterprises would include engineering projects and in special cases, control of some utilities. Presumably, en- lightened, "chivalric" businessmen would initiate these measures and ensure that they were implemented in the most effective ways. On the personal level, businessmen would cooperate with the state both in "relieving the suffering of those who are weak and ailing through no fault of their own, and to whom a shilling may yield more real benefit than he could get from spending many additional pounds," and in increasing voluntary service to help the poor (345). Under the conditions of economic chivalry, Marshall contended, "The people generally would be so well nurtured and so truly educated that the land would be a pleasant place to live in" (Social Possibilities" 345). Throughout "Social Possibilities of Economic Chivalry" Marshall uses an uncharacteristic (for him) dialectical method that attests to the power his ideas had for late Victorian and Edwardian culture. Political economy in his thesis, socialism his antithesis. The synthesis he develops results in a "softening” of some of more value-free premises of Adam Smith and a partial loosening of the dominant ideol- ogy of laissez-faire. For the anxious bourgeoisie Marshall’s ideas were common sense: not only did the middle 126 class share with him the still powerful Victorian idea of duty, Marshall also perpetuated the usual arguments against socialism, among them that it would impair "the higher qualities of human nature," stagnate improvements in the means of production, and promote laziness and jealousy among those who believed others were getting more than their "fair share" (341). Marshall’s arguments certainly were by no means unique, but by putting them in the context of a "new" economics, they had an impact on practical Victorians who "were quick to respond to new theories and almost as quick to act upon them" (Himmelfarb 280). The "new economics" also demanded a response from committed socialists. Clearly, then, Marshall’s economics were a reaction to the maturing working class consciousness during the first decade of the twentieth-century. In the fiction of the per- iod, this consciousness is best represented by the work- ing-class novelist Robert Tressell (1868-1911). When Tressell was writing Ihe_Begged:Ireseered_£hilanthrepiste (19061911)f“’he was compelled to confront the notion of economic and social chivalry, specifically the ideas of philanthropy, the debate over laissez-faire, and arguments against socialism. These three issues had by Tressell’s time saturated the consciousness of both capitalists and workers. Scene after scene in the novel represents a 76'See Fred Ball’s biography of Noonan, Qhe_er_the Qemhed, for a full account of the composition and publica- tion of The Hegged Trousered Philanthropists. 127 systematic uncovering of the ironies inherent in dominant bourgeoisie ideology. Indeed, Tressell’s major mode of representation in the novel is irony. As he confronts various aspects of political, social and economic structures used to maintain the status quo, he continually displaces and usurps them, reducing them to the dominant culture and exposing them as values that are false to the socialist alternative. The Hegged;Treheered_£hiTehthrepiete can, I believe, be fully appreciated for Tressell’s ability to develop his argument for socialism by juxtaposing it with the hegemonic process of dominance and subordination. The novel, in other words, seeks to expose the subversive incongruities of the dominant in order to create an alternative hegemony. Ray- mond Williams’s explanation of the hegemonic is useful for its insistence on hegemony as a process. Whereas to speak of ”ruling class" ideology is to speak of "a passive form of dominance that omits a description of the struggle of the constant renewal, recreation, defense, and modification of the dominant," the hegemonic allows for the consideration of a "complex of experiences, relationships, and activities, with specific and [continually] changing pressures and limits" (Herrieh_ehd_Literethre 112). As Williams explains, a hegemony is always dominant, "But it is neither total nor inclusive” (109). At any time, "Forms of alternative or directly oppositional politics and culture exist as signifi- cant elements in society" (113). The hegemonic process 128 works to control the opposition, in some cases by transform- ing it, or even incorporating it. Herein, in part, lies the uniqueness of Tressell’s novel: he takes on ideas such as the "new economics" by reducing them to the terms of the dominant and thereby exposing them as absurd, while at the same time offering an alternative not reducible to the original hegemony and independent from it. Tressell’s novel as a cultural analysis seeks to grasp the hegemonic in its active, formative, and transformational process. He sees the relations of dominance and subordina- tion as saturating the whole process of living, including not only economic, political, and social activities, but also identities and relationships. An important figure in the narrative is Frank Owen: decorator, wage slave, and socialist. Yet Owen is not like the single (often heroic) protagonist found in Victorian or Edwardian novels. An entire class is the subject of the novel, and that helps Tressell, as Jack Mitchell has noted, to indicate "the universal and systematic nature of capitalist exploitation much more effectively than through the life-story of a single, central hero" ("Early Harvest" 71). The novel spans only one year in the lives of the people of Mugsborough, but it is a conscious representation of the circumstances of workers ”at all period of their lives, from the cradle to the grave” (Tressell 11). This allows Tressell both to recreate the complexity of the hegemonic and to distinguish between the dominant, the alternative, and (as we shall see) 129 a false alternative. However, the extent of the saturation of the dominant hegemony in its ability to control or incor- porate alternatives and opposition creates a tone of despair and anger in the novel that at times subverts its stated intention of explaining "what socialism is, as opposed to what many represent it as being" (Tressell 12). While some appreciative readers of the novel tend to locate Tressell’s anger in his frustration concerning the unformed class consciousness of the proletariat, others--I think correctly --locate it in his despair of the evolving hegemonic which is able to transform itself by responding to the opposition effectively enough to keep the proletarian consciousness in check."’ Yet Tressell understood that the hegemonic is never total. Socialism--the type that Tressell seeks to demystify--constitutes a significant break beyond hegemonic limits and pressures. The urgency and impatience behind the moods of despair and anger could very well have come from the realization that some aspects of socialism were--as in Marshallian economics--in the process of being neutralized, reduced, or incorporated into the dominant. It was Tressell’s task to reclaim socialism as a revolutionary, counter hegemonic. Part of this effort was to refute the notion of the chivalric businessman who, Marshall claimed, would be able "See Roskies and Neetans for perceptive discussions of Noonan’s ambivalence concerning the revolutionary potential of the English working classes. 130 to put self-interest aside in the spirit of public service through "increased voluntary service" as an aid to the state’s efforts to "relieve the suffering" of the deserving poor ("Social Possibilities" 345){n’ Until 1908 when old age pensions were introduced, there were no radical new steps taken to reconsider the welfare responsibilities of the state (Checkland 227). There were the Poor Laws, some pockets of private philanthropy, self-help through the savings banks, the co-operative movement and Friendly Societies, and there was the very powerful Charity Organisation Society. The C.O.S. was very busy in the first decade of the century. As socialist ideas disseminated, the bourgeoisie’s faith in charity grew. Charity was big busi- ness in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain.‘79 Founded in 1863, the work of the C.O.S. consisted of distinguishing between the ”deserving" and "undeserving" poor and adminis- tering relief in the form of school lunches and food tick- ets. Rarely was cash distributed. Marshall, however, believed that money should be given to the poor in such a way as to raise the standard of living. Presumably, the public-spirited businessmen would devise a new theory of charity and invent a mechanism for cash distribution as well 78The phrase "chivalrous businessman" is an unfortunate one. It underscores the metaphoric lengths to which the bourgeoisie went to maintain its dominance. Although we do not know if Noonan actually read Marshall, he certainly would have appreciated the irony of the phrase. 79See Ross for a detailed account of C.O.S. activities, particularly in London. 131 as other kinds of help. This, along with working-class participation in the administration of relief, Marshall argued, would be a step toward abolishing poverty in England (erieie1_2epere 225). Marshall’s views were new for his time and on the surface seem unusually progressive for a political economist. Yet the fact remains that Marshall was vigorously anti- socialist. His economics of chivalry appealed to the ”al- truistic, duty-bound businessman," but his assumption that this altruism could be found in the business sector belies his previously-stated criticism that the socialists base their policies on "too high a degree of altruism in man" ("Social Possibilities" 323). As Tressell knew, such altru- ism is scarce and can rarely be effective against capitalist self-interest. Marshall assumed that middle class interest could be separated from middle class philanthropy: Tressell knew better. Consider the chapter "The O.B.S." Here is a depiction of Mugsborough’s businessmen meeting to decide how the Organized Benevolent Society will distribute relief to the unemployed. The chapter begins with an objective de- scription of the purpose of the O.B.S. and its sources of income. The Society has "three hundred pounds in hard cash. This money was devoted to the relief of cases of distress," but one hundred pounds goes to the secretary Sawney Grinder, "a most deserving case" (365). The objectivity falls away as the narrator describes how Sawney, the nephew of Amos Grinder, came to be the secretary of the O.B.S.. The 132 members at the meeting consist of the town’s leading employers and their wives who use the Society as a means to become "acquainted with people of superior social position" (366). At the election of the secretary, nine people stand to nominate "a noble-minded friend or relative willing to sacrifice himself for the good of the poor" (366). The narrator explains this tense moment: The nine Benevolent stood looking at each other and at the Chairman with sickly smiles upon their hypocritical faces. No one spoke. It was a dra- matic moment. It was necessary to be careful. It would never do to have a contest. The secretary of the 0.8.8. was usually regarded as a sort of philanthropist by the outside public, and it was necessary to keep this fiction alive. (367) The scene shows how the "altruistic" businessmen and their wives conspire to maintain the "respectability" of the O.B.S. in the eyes of the public. The fiction of philanthropy is perpetuated by the newspaper account of the meeting entitled "A Splendid Record of Miscellaneous and Valuable Work" (368), and a list of the relief distributed the previous year, half of which, we learn in the narrator’s footnote, consisted of distributing cheap soup tickets. "The O.B.S." relates a complex interlocking of political, social, and cultural forces to the distribution of "relief," a process that also illustrates the distribution of power and influence within the dominant class. 133 Tressell cracks the facade of the O.B.S. by exposing the nepotism and hypocrisy of charitable institutions that use smoke and mirrors to "help" the poor. The irony in this chapter, as it is throughout the novel, is bitter and angry. Beneath this anger, however, there is a realization that the problem lies not in the societies, as Marshall believed: they are merely one type of the many institutions which keep the workers from developing a revolutionary consciousness that could solve the problem of unequal distribution. "If it were not for all this so-called charity the starving unemployed men all over the country would demand to be allowed to work and produce the things they are perishing for want of," the narrator argues (370). Thus Tressell both emphasizes the socialist argument against philanthropy by reducing it to the terms of the hegemonic, and builds an alternative whereby philanthropy would cease to exist once the workers control supply and demand. The use of the conditional tense in the passage attests to the extent that "philanthropy" has been internalized in the workers, for they are completely unaware of how it solidifies their subordinate social position. The very title of the novel reflects this saturation of the dominant. Philanthropy of the ragged-trousered kind, in the context of capitalism, is not very incongruous. Owen calls attention to this in his demonstration of surplus value found in the chapter "The Oblong." Using slices of bread and charts drawn on the wall of the Cave, Owen tries 134 to prove to his co-workers that money is the cause of pover- ty. He explains, The workers produce Everything! If you walk through the streets of a town or a city, and look around, Everything that you can see . . . [was] all made by the working class, who spend all their wages in buying back only a very small part of the things they produce. Therefore what remains in the possession of their masters represents the difference between the value of the work done and the wages paid for doing it. (299) The workers’ willingness to accept conditions as they are makes them philanthropists supporting their employers and by extension the capitalist system. There is, in terms of the dominant, nothing strange about this philanthropy. However, surplus value cannot be reduced to elements within the alternative hegemony Owen is at this point in the novel creating for the philanthrOpists. Under socialism philan- thropy would be incongruous. Raymond Williams’s own initial literal reading of the title--which unfortunately prevented him from reading the novel for many years--was, under the conditions of the hegemonic, a correct reading.80 Williams lacked the context to know that Tressell’s novel turns the idea of philanthropy on its head. 80In "The Ragged-Arsed Philanthropists," Williams says he thought the book "to be one of those maudlin Victorian tracts which showed that it didn’t matter how poor you were, you could always help others . . ., which was one of the forms of evasion of social and moral questions which were standard in Victorian writing addressed to the working people” (239). 135 In addition to the further enculturation of philanthro- py as a means of domination, there were political and eco- nomic factors that during the period Tressell was composing his novel, dominated the consciousness of the country. The idea of a free market place was, of course, a pillar of political economy. Economic and social laissez faire were felt to be "natural laws" and were used as arguments against state intervention in any form. There was major but anoma- lous intervention in the form of factory acts, education reform, and the various versions of the Poor Laws. As of 1884, working-class opinion began to matter politically. The issue of tariff reform dominated the general election of 1906. Not since the Anti-Corn Law agitation in the 1840’s did the working classes receive so thorough an economic education as during the tariff reform controversy (Beer 348). Thus, tariff reform is the focus of the political discussions among the philanthropists who argue the point according to their liberal or conservative alliances. These arguments reinforce Tressell’s argument for socialism in two ways. First, by representing the philanthropists as unques- tionably loyal to either party line, he exposes the tariff reform debate as a subversive form of political domination. Second, he shows the devastating effect the dominant hege- monic has on the relationships among the workers who are under its control. Between 1903 and 1906 the Conservative Party struggled to bring back the tariff as a regulatory mechanism for the economy. A national campaign was mounted to restore to the state this macro-policy weapon (Checkland 171). The Tories 136 argued that Germany and the United States were benefitting from Britain’s free trade policies while Britain was losing its advantages in the world market. There was much Conser- vative campaign rhetoric directed to the working class that stressed the benefits to be enjoyed through sustained in- comes and unemployment (Checkland 172). The Liberals, on the other hand, rejected protectionism, insisting on the country’s need for tax-free food stuffs and raw materials. A middle ground was proposed through a letter in the Timee written by Alfred Marshall. In it, he devised a complex scheme that would impose tariffs on goods imported from all countries, yet tariffs on colonial imports would be on a sliding scale that would account for the economic stability of each colony.81 A staunch advocate of laissez faire, Marshall broke from tradition out of his fear of the in- creasing industrial efficiency of Germany and the United States. Marshall’s compromise failed--as did others. The Liberal reaffirmation of free trade won them the elec- tion.82 The operation of the economy continued to be the "concern of the market and those who traded in it, and not of the central state" (Checkland 173). A spokesman for Tariff Reform in The_3egged;Treteered Ehiiehthrepiete is Crass, the obsequious foreman at Rushton and Company. The free trade debate is a topic of contention between Owen and Crass throughout the novel. Tressell in- troduces it as early as the first page where having 81The letter is discussed in Wood 314. ”Checkland 170-172 gives a succinct account of the 1906 election. 137 described the work being done on "The Cave," the narrator concludes by observing, "In brief, those employed there might be said to be living in a Tariff Reform Paradise-~they had Plenty of Work" (13). There are several levels to this irony, the most obvious of which would have been apparent to contemporary readers.” In both "novel time"“ and histor- ical time (as we have seen) free trade dominated economic policy. Therefore the philanthropists were not enjoying the ”benefits" of tariff reform. The passage begins to peel away the layers of the myths surrounding the debate on tariff reform. There are other, more complex, economic forces governing work at The Cave, and Owen will attempt to explain to the philanthropists that free trade and protec- tion are irrelevant to their being employed. For Owen the socialist, the debate is a non-issue. Still, it must be exposed as such. To emphasize his point, Tressell later will have one of Owen’s co-workers reading an article from the Mugsborough Qheeerer, attempting "to laboriously work through some carefully cooked statistics relating to Free Trade and Protection" (17). The debate that ensues occurs when Crass chides Owen for believing in free trade. But Owen shifts the argument away from the simplistic terms of tariff reform by asserting that the cause of poverty lies elsewhere: a3’Historically situated, the phrase is more ironic than even the exaggerated "Paradise" would suggest. “See Bakhtin’s "Forms of Time and the Chronotope in the Novel" in The_hie;egie_1hegihetieh 84-258. The chrono- tope is a way of reading texts through the forces at work in the culture system from which they spring. 138 I never said anything of the kind. We’ve had Free Trade for the last fifty years and to-day people are living in a condition of more or less abject poverty, and thousands are literally starving. When we had Protection things were worse still. Other countries have Protection and yet many of their people are glad to come here and work for starvation wages. The only difference between Free Trade and Protection is that under certain circumstances one might be a little worse than the other, but as remedies for poverty, neither of them are of any real use whatever, for the simple reason that they do not deal with the real causes of poverty. (24) Later Owen will posit--to the amusement of the philanthro- pists--that money is the cause of poverty, but here he is foregrounding his argument for socialism. In order to con- vince the philanthropists that socialism is a viable alter- native to capitalism, he must expose the dominant political (and economic) fallacy that there are only two sides to the question: the workers do not need, as the Conservatives and Liberals would have them believe, to be either for or against Tariff Reform. Instead, there is socialism. Owen’s task is a formidable one. Crass and the others who hold strong opinions on the issue do not realize that the sim- plistic (but dominant) proposals for alleviating poverty are, in effect, keeping them in their economically subordi- nate condition. Owen’s insight on the dominant hege-mony, however, is continually buried beneath the events in the 139 narrative. The difficulty of the struggle for hegemony reaches its nadir in Mugsborough during an election for its M.P.. The chapter "The Wise Men of the East" describes the hegemony’s power over the workers who participate in the campaigns but, to the frustration of the socialists, do not understand that the election is an expression of hegemonic control. The Philanthropists accept the election as "normal reality," even to the point of defending their choice of candidates through physical violence. What is remarkable about the chapter is Tressells’ representation of the work- ers’ passive acquiescence to the ruling class’s way of see- ing the world. In an especially biting scene, Tressell represents the workers cheering a candidate who tells them they must wait five-hundred years for social conditions to be reformed to the point where the working class can enjoy "some of the benefits of civilization" (577). The candidate asks if the workers can wait that long. Their responses show the hold the ruling class has on those subordinated by it: "Yes Sir: We’ll wait a thousand years if you like, Sir!" "I’ve waited all my life hoping and trust- ing for better conditions, so a few years won’t make much difference to me." "Don’t you trouble to ’urry yourself Sir . . .You know bettern than the likes of us ’ow long it ought to take." (577- 588) Here Tressell’s focus is on the workers who ignorantly accept any improvement in their lives as coming from their 140 "betters."”’ They are the "wise men from the east" re- ferred to in the chapter title, a characterization one of the candidates gives them in all seriousness, whereas Tressell exploits the misnomer by calling the workers "Solomons," or repeating the phrase "The Wise Men" through- out the chapter. This irony does, in effect, both ridicule the participation of the workers in their own subordination, and it creates a tone of frustration concerning the profound influence the hegemonic has on them. The entire chapter is also an unflinching representa- tion of how the bourgeois hegemony sustains its dominance by pitting worker against worker who willingly participate in the process. The polarization of the philanthropists reach- es its peak during the election for the Mugsborough M.P.. Both Liberal and Conservative sides have hired speakers and thugs to incite the crowds. Tressell recounts incidents of Tories and Whigs fighting each other in the streets or ganging together to maul the socialists (584). Significant- ly, the nearly anarchist street brawling is precisely the kind of development the candidates warn the workers would happen if socialism became predominant. The socialists, too, have difficulty sustaining their commitment to over- throwing the system. Barrington’s encounter with a disen- chanted socialist who has turned into a paid speaker for one of the candidates is, as Raymond Williams has said, "a cer- tain kind of reactionary rendering of the working class as irredeemably incapable of improving their conditions" “See Sillitoe’s introduction for a reference to this attitude. $53.11;“: 1' 141 ('Ragged-Arsed” 249).“’ While claiming that "no man who has once been a socialist can ever cease to be one," the paid speaker tells Barrington he perpetuates the existing system to acquire money and respect (584-585), the two values held most dearly by the dominant class. His ridicule of the workers’ ignorance comes very close to Owen and the narrator’s. The difference is that for them power and influence in terms of the dominant are not acceptable as common sense as they are for the majority of the workers: a new predominant practice and consciousness is necessary and, as Barrington tells the speaker, ”Worth fighting for" (586). The debate on Tariff reform, then, reaches its climax in "The Wise Men of the East." Tressell needed to show that the enfranchisement of the workers did not give them control over their lives: rather, the hegemony succeeded in making participation in politics a process of containment. He seems to have clearly understood that, in the words of Williams, ”The idea of hegemony is especially important in societies in which electoral politics and public opinion are significant factors, and in which social practice is seen to depend on consent to certain dominant ideas which in fact express the needs of a dominant class" (Hey_flerde 145). Survival of the dominant depends on keeping the alter- native hegemony in check. Most of the speakers hired for the election, as well as the candidates themselves, fill their speeches with anti-socialist sentiment. Adam Sweater, I""Williams, in "Ragged-Arsed," considers this part of the novel on its own in order to warn that it should not be isolated from the greater context (249). 142 Mugsborough businessman and Liberal candidate, tells his supporters that socialism is "madness! Chaos! Anarchy! It means Ruin! Black Ruin for the rich, and consequently of course, Blacker Ruin still for the poor!" (574). Sweater is speaking from the position of the ruler to a group of subor- dinates who do not, the narrator points out, realize that they are already in that state. The crowd supports Sweater’s warning. One Philanthropist expresses the common opinion that socialists don’t want to work for a living (575). There are frequent places in the novel where Owen, Barrington, or the narrator respond to these anti-socialist opinions. These were necessary, for Tressell’s means of overthrowing the hegemony were argument and persuasion: he had to chip away at the dominant in order to create a space for an emergent consciousness. All of the anti-socialism in the novel reflects Tressell’s time. Although supporters of socialism published countless books and pamphlets and the SDF vans reached many workers, socialism as a logical alter- native practice and consciousness was in general unpopular among them. Tressell’s argument--one of the reasons he wrote the novel--is that the workers do not believe in socialism because they do not understand it. Not because, as the paid speaker believed, they were too "stupid" to understand the causes of their degradation, for, as Williams points out, if Tressell had believed that, he would not have written the novel."' The workers had become saturated with the 87See Williams, "Ragged-Arsed" 249-250 143 antisocialist myths of the bourgeois hegemonic, myths that were perpetuated in the writings of Alfred Marshall which had, as we have seen, a profound influence on Edwardian culture. Still, it must be remembered, Marshall tried to take the ”hard edges” off competition by proposing some methods of alleviating poverty, some of which were also being proposed by socialists. For example, in his youth, Marshall had, as he called it, a ”tendency to socialism” (Tndeetry_ehd_Trede_gii). In the context of late-Victorian culture, the definition of "socialist" was something of an umbrella term, often abusive, for anyone who deviated from the status quo in any sphere of life.” Marshall described his youthful concern for the condition of society and the progress of the working class as socialist, yet he was unaware of the specific meaning of the term. He had read Owen and Marx, but felt they were out of touch with reality. As a young Cambridge professor, Marshall was sympathetic to trade unions.” Later he would write that although they promoted self-help and self-discipline, unions disrupted the interdependence of trades by limiting numbers in a trade and demanding artificially high wages (Heehehiee_et_1hdhetry 9). As we have seen, early in his career, Marshall flirted with tariff reform and philanthropic institutions, but his 88For one of many explanations of what ”socialism" meant, see McWilliams-Tullberg’s discussion of Marshall’s idea of a socialist, esp. 375. ”Himmelfarb 295-296 and McWilliams-Tullberg 377-379 summarize Marshall’s attitude towards unions. 144 objection to socialism throughout his life was grounded in his belief in "cooperation," distinguishable from socialism ”by advocating no disturbance of private property, by insisting on self-help, and by abhorring state-help and all unnecessary interference with individual freedom” (Eeenemiee mm 34)- Once Marshall’s specific objections to socialism are isolated in his writings, it can be seen that they were as one Marshall scholar has put it, "not intellectual but emotional" (McWilliams-Tullberg 376). Marshall had an interest in improving the condition of the workers, but this mission resulted in a life-long attempt to explain how the status quo would, with little interference, point English culture in the direction of an ideal social organization (McWilliams-Tullberg 377). Among his objections are three that perpetuated the feelings of the dominant hegemonic in Edwardian culture. Each of these is refuted in Tressell’s novel. First, and the most common, is that socialism discourages motivation. Second, socialism seeks to subvert the existing system by which workers choose their work for themselves. Third, many believed that socialism could only be brought about by violent revolutionary methods which would constitute a violation against the immutable laws of nature. After a lecture he gave in a workman’s quarters of Bristol on Henry George’s £regreee_ehd_zeyerty, Marshall was asked about the possible success of socialism. He replied 145 that "men were found to get lazy if their laziness did not cause them much trouble. If this were not true, then he would support socialism. The reply brought laughter and applause from the audience" (McWilliams-Tullberg 383). Marshall himself, however, advocated more leisure, and he failed to cite one socialist that supported laziness. The assumption in his reply is that the potential for laziness is found only among the poor, although penalties for lazi- ness hit the poor more harshly than the rich--e.g. the preoccupation of the C.O.S. to distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor. Equating socialism with laziness was popular in Edwardian culture. The Philanthro- pists often do so in the novel. Tressell addresses this argument in two ways. First of all, the foreman Crass is the Philanthropist most prone to bringing up the subject, yet he spends his days on the job avoiding work. Secondly, during the question period after Barrington’s "Great Ora- tion," (under circumstances similar to Marshall’s lecture in Bristol), Crass asks Barrington what would happen under socialism, to "them wot WON’T WORK?" (533). Barrington’s reply that "in the Co-operative Commonwealth there will be no place for loafers, whether they call themselves aristo- crats or tramps, those who are too lazy to work shall have no share in those things that are produced by the labour of others“ (534), usurps the notion that only the poor are lazy and further re-contextualizes it by showing the absurdity of not working when all benefit from work under socialism. 146 Thus Tressell reacts to this powerful objection to socialism by attempting to dislodge it from the consciousness of the workers and putting it in the context of his alternative hegemony. Marshall’s second objection to socialism, the fear that workers would no longer be able to choose their work for themselves, is also one that the Philanthropists express after the Great Oration. It is difficult to locate the cultural origin of this opinion, but it is nevertheless based on a misunderstanding, as Tressell tries to show. One of the more curious aspects of The_HeggedeTreeeered_£hiieh; threpiete is the deferral of the answer to the question the Philanthropists pose to Owen after he has tried to teach them the causes of poverty. Crass and others sneer after these lessons and ask what Owen would propose to do about these social problems. Not until the end of the novel does Tressell address the question, and then it is Barrington, not Owen, who answers. Tressell’s reason for choosing Barrington to give the answer shows, I think, an uncanny consideration of his audience--not just the Philanthropists but also his implied (working class) readers. The Philan- thropists sometimes consider Owen to be mad, or at the very least difficult to understand. Barrington’s voice therefore Provides the listener/reader with a new authority, someone else to be reckoned with who is not as familiar as Owen. 360k Mitchell has observed further that "Tressell’s balance between his two socialist characters correspond to the 147 balance within the socialist movement of the time" (Hehert Treeeeii 141). Furthermore, by placing the Oration near the end, Tressell is able to build on Owen’s previous explana- tions of the inequalities built into the bourgeois hegemonic in order to offer a fully-developed alternative. Thus when Barrington describes work in the Co-operative Commonwealth, the contrast between work under capitalism and work under socialism is more fully apparent. As far as choosing their own work, under capitalism the Philanthropists have no choice: they are all expected to do the same amount of work in the least amount of time. Only once in the novel is Owen able to do the work he likes--the Moorish decorations on the ceiling of The Cave--but then it is because he works for Rushton, which means he works cheap. The workers are not free to choose their work: they work where work is available. When Barrington tells the Philanthropists that under socialism all would be truly free to choose their own trade, they want to know, in effect, who would do the "dirty work." Interestingly enough, his reply is quite similar to an idea that Marshall once shared with the socialists--that manual labor should be shared by the whole population.90 The difference is that socialism requires surgery: reform needs only medicine.91 While Marshall sought to incorpo- rate elements of the opposition into the dominant hegemonic 9oSee Wood 317. 91See McWilliams-Tullberg 378. 148 in order to control it, Barrington gives an answer that is, in the terms of his emergent hegemony, irreducible to the dominant. Tressell’s response to the third popular objections to socialism--that it can only be brought about through violent methods offers a means of transforming the hegemony from within. Marshall, like many Edwardians, assumed the over- throw of capitalism would entail a sudden, bloody revolu- tion, yet few socialists of the period were condoning vio- lence. The SDF, the Fabians, and to a certain extent the Labour Party, preached gradualism through using the existing system to subvert the hegemonic. In the Oration Barrington tells the Philanthropists to use their vote to fill the House of Commons with "Revolutionary Socialists" (538). Tressell seems to make a distinction here between the Labour Party and socialism, although for a time the Labour Party was more concerned with socialism than with party poli- tics.‘92 His implied distrust of Labor politics has an historical basis. Seventy years before he wrote the novel, the Chartist movement had weakened enough to be absorbed into the Liberal Party and had so become useless. There was a very real fear among trade unionists and socialists that the astonishing success of Labour in the general election of 1906 would eventually become neutralized by the unprincipled opportunism that characterized the Liberal Party."3 '“Beer, vol. II 315-344 writes a full account of the formation of the Labour Party. 9"‘See Beer, vol. II 336. 149 Tressell, as we have seen, was very aware of the ability of the hegemonic to control alternatives to it. Thus two of the Philanthropists who had shown signs of becoming social- ists as a result of Owen’s arguments and socialist litera- ture, Harlow and Newman, are shown participating wholeheart- edly in the Mugsborough election, even dragging the Liberal candidates’ carriage to their next stop (579). Tressell seems to concede to the pervasive late-Victo- rian/Edwardian belief in evolution, specifically its abhor- rence of violent change. In his Eriheipiee Marshall took as his motto, Nature non facit saltum, asserting that ”projects for great and sudden change are not, as ever, foredoomed to fail and to cause reaction" (13). Barrington posits that socialism would evolve by adopting the competitive methods of the dominant hegemonic so that for a time two states would exist side by side until the emergent socialist state obliterates the capitalist monopolies. This idea of state socialism parallels that of the SDF.“’ Significantly, as one critic has noted, the philanthropists do have revolu- tionary potential that surfaces at times in the novel.‘95 The semi-drunk’s rebellion against his job cleaning the filthy restaurant kitchen, Crass’s fantasy about putting Hunter in his place, the "class war" that erupts during the beano when Barrington stands up to the employers by “See Williams, "Ragged-Arsed" 251. 95See Roskies 63. 150 championing socialism, and even Newman’s insistence on using glasspaper to do his job right, all reveal a side of the workers that for moment belies Owen’s frustration with them and gives him reason to hope. In a novel arguing for so- cialism through representing the proletariat as builders and decorators whose work is creation and re-creation, the possibility of drawing out the latent revolutionary poten- tial of the workers is always present. Still, the socialist alternative in its infancy cannot assert the kind of power necessary to compete with the dominant. The stranglehold of capitalism and the politics that secure it are continually at work. As we know, Marshall appealed to a latent altruism he detected in businessmen and counted on social pressure to bring it out. His program for solving the problem of social and economic inequalities came, in contrast to Tressell’s, from the "top." In effect he thought, along with the Mugs- borough politicians, that what was good for business was good for the workers. Tressell knew better, as can be seen in his characterization of Mugsborough buSinessmen who ”experiment" in socialism when it coincides with their interests. The chapter "The Brigands Hold a Council of War" illustrates a brilliant understanding of the hegemonic process of control when it incorporates elements of the alternative. Briefly, the leading Mugsborough businessmen founded a Light Company to drive the Gas Works Company out of town. Not able to compete with the Gas Company, the 151 brigands arranged for the municipality to buy the Light Company: ”Why shouldn’t Mugsborough go in for Socialism as well as other towns?", asks one of the council members (331). The council members change the accounts, arrange for favorable publicity, and congratulate themselves on their cunning: Wot I like about this ’ere business is that we’re not only doin’ ourselves a bit of good, . . . but we’re likewise doin’ the Socialists a lot of harm. When the ratepayers have bought the Works, and they begin to kick up a row because they’re losin’ money over it--we can tell ’em that it’s Socialism! And then they’ll say that if that’s Socialism, they don’t want no more of it.” (334) The scene is, as Jack Mitchell has claimed, "A shrewd blow against Fabian propaganda that urged local councils to experiment with socialism" (Behert_Treeeeii 93),“‘as well as a perceptive observation of the hegemonic in action. ”Socialism" allows the Brigands to ensure their profit margins. This representation of "politics in action," however, is not peculiar to Mugsborough’s businessmen-poli- ticians. Mitchell has shown that the "continual reinforce- ment of economic and political dominance was a practice of the entire state apparatus of Britain" (Behert_TreeeeTi 93). '“Mitchell says that "this aspect of the book is dated. Corruption in local politics has clearly improved . . ."(93). The tendency of the dominant to incorporate ele- ments of the alternative hegemony in order to neutralize it, however, is clearly not dated. 152 The hegemonic cannot "passively exist as a form of domi- nance."”' It has to be continually renewed, recreated, defended, and modified. In the case of the Mugsborough Light Co., the dominant is reinforced by its opposition. So far we have seen that as a counter hegemony, social- ism is impeded by the reified consciousness of the proletar- iat and the process of incorporation, particularly as it is exemplified by ideas such as Marshall’s "economics of chiv- alry." Tressell’s awareness of these obstacles helps him to situate individual experience in the economic and social matrix within which they become intelligible. This "laying bare" relies on the innovative form of The_Hegged_Treeeered Ehiiehthrepiete and on the use of irony as a persuasive device. In a novel unusual for its multi-layered narrative shifts from one story-line to another, its interruptions, diagrams, and authorial outbursts, for its overall formal discontinuity]98 irony provides it with a consistent tone. Irony serves Tressell’s project in two ways. First, it allows him to locate the absurdities in capitalism: and second, it invites his readers to share his point of view. Together, the discontinuity of form and the incongruity of content are devices used to disintegrate the readers’ own reified consciousness. The formative process of the novel exemplifies an 97See Williams, Harxish and Litereture 112. '"Neetens has written the most interesting contribution to the discussion of the novel’s form. See esp. 86. 153 experiment against fixed (hegemonic) forms. As one critic has noted, The_£hiiehthrepiete’ form makes for "exactly the kind of fragmentation that has enabled a proletarian audi- ence to consume the novel in an unprecedently modern way: isolating bits for discussion . . . dramatising favourite chapters for dramatic purposes, and the like."”’ Frequent authorial intervention--particularly in the form of angry outbursts and short lectures--marks a process of both innovation and stabilization. Intervention in the novel genre has a long history, but seldom (if ever) has it been used as a weapon against an entire economic system. Tressell’s interventions have something "irreverently unlit- erary and unrespectable about them" (Neetens 86). More traditionally, the interruptions provide a place where the author meets the readers to share his views on the action. As one critic has noted, this common ground provides ”the conditions for readers’ co-operation in its adversarial stance towards the dominant social, political, and cultural structures (Miles 1). It is irony that makes co-operation possible. Irony causes fact (what is) to merge with value (what ought to be) and thus, in the context of The_2hi1en; threpiete, is a means of establishing revolutionary con- sciousness. In The_Bheterie_er_Trehy, Wayne Booth uses the metaphor of building to explain how irony works. He distinguishes 99See Neetens 86. 154 between the "shaky edifice" of a literal reading and the elevated but firmer position of an ironic reading. Ideally, readers would choose not to "dwell" in the former, prefer- ring instead to share with the author the superior views of the latter. Irony, Booth says, "Dramatises choice and forces readers into hierarchical participation" (43). Tressell’s use of irony forces his readers to break free of reified consciousness in order to participate in the cre- ation of a new way of seeing and practice. This is crucial to Tressell’s project. While Marx believed the proletariat was the only social group capable of constituting the basis of a new culture because it was not integrated into the reified society, Tressell saw that the proletariat was not opposing it as a revolutionary force. Instead, by 1900 the market economy saturated the collective consciousness so effectively that it became a "mere reflection of economic life" and ultimately disappeared.100 In Tressell’s novel it is often Owen who serves as mediator as he reflects on the reified consciousness of his co-workers. He becomes frustrated, but always tempers his frustration with the firm belief in the logic of socialism. The chapter "Vive la System," for example, reports an argu- ment Owen has with Crass and others regarding the inflated salary of the borough engineer. Unlike some of the other 10°Goldman 10. His views on the reified consciousness of the workers between the years 1900-1910 are fascinating, but ultimately enmeshed in confused claims about typologies of the novel. 155 arguments in the novel, this one is filtered through Owen’s consciousness: there is no direct dialogue. When the phi- lanthropists resort to their favorite argument that highly- paid workers are more deserving than "the likes of us," the narration shifts entirely to Owen’s thoughts, which would seem to reflect reservations Tressell’s readers may have concerning the possibility of a proletarian revolution. The passage is worth quoting at length, for it is a representative example of how Tressell uses irony as a means to persuade his readers that the "system" is still vulnera- ble as long as the readers are enlightened enough to share in Owen’s revolutionary consciousness: Usually whenever Owen reflected upon the gross injustices and inhumanity of the existing social disorder, he became convinced that it could not possibly last: it was bound to fall to pieces because of its own rottenness. It was not just, it was not common sense, and therefore it would not endure. But always, after one of these argu- ments--or rather disputes--with his fellow work- men, he almost relapsed into helplessness and despondency, for then he realized how vast and how strong are the fortifications that surround the present system: the great barriers and ramparts of invincible ignorance, apathy and self-contempt, which will have to be broken down before the sys- tem of society of which they are the defenses, can 156 be swept away. At other times as he thought of this marvelous system, it presented itself to him in such an aspect of almost comic absurdity that he was forced to laugh and to wonder whether it really existed at all, or if it were only an illusion of his disordered mind. One of the things that the human race needed in order to survive was shelter: so with much painful labour they had constructed a large number of houses. Thousands of these houses were now stand- ing unoccupied, while millions of the people who had helped build these houses were either homeless or herding together in overcrowded hovels. These human beings had such a strange system of arranging their affairs that if anyone were to go and burn down a lot of the houses he would be conferring a great boon upon those who had built them, because such an act would "Make a lot more work!" (396-397) Owen feels the tension between fact and value at those moments when it seems to him nothing will penetrate the apathy of his co-workers. The system is rotting, Owen observes, but he also sees how the workers participate in its existence by not taking advantage of its vulnerability. The qualifiers "usually" and "almost" connote the depth of Owen’s perception: without bouts of despair he himself would 157 be absurd, a caricature of an idealist. Yet when he contem- plates the absurdity of the situation--when he merges fact and value through irony--he is able to sustain his commit- ment. Despondency is then somewhat mitigated by the irony of "the marvelous system" which is "almost" comically ab- surd, "almost" because of the very real tragedies for which the system is responsible. "The existing social disorder," though, is reflected momentarily in Owen’s "own disordered mind" as he wonders if the system is actually as ridiculous as it appears to him. The last two paragraphs belie the illusory nature of the system by exemplifying its absurdity, in this case the empty houses built by those who can not afford to live in them. The workers, instead of wondering why they live a degraded existence, imagine destruction of the houses as a means of creating employment. Tressell breaks apart the "logic" of the system, exposes the reified consciousness that maintains it, and thereby allows his readers a clear view of capitalism’s incongruities. No overly subtle inferences are demanded of the reader in the passage, nor, for that matter, anywhere else in the novel. Tressell explains his ironies so that readers do not have to guess at his knowledge or his beliefs. Yet if Tressell’s stable irony requires few intuitive leaps, it does require the reader to commune with him, to be involved inferentially in order to share his point of view. Booth observes that "all non-literal language, every ’abnormal’ way of saying anything, invites us to reject a lower literal 158 interpretation and climb to a better one" (40). Tressell wants his readers to join in the process of destabilization, to make their own history: after all, history is displace- ment and usurpation. Irony, therefore, is Tressell’s most potent weapon against the dominant hegemony: it is his strategy against a late industrial system of containment and domination with the capability of adapting to counter-hege- monies which threaten its dominance. Because of the unusual circumstances surrounding the publication of W. the severe editing it underwent, and the year of its appearance, it is impossible to ascertain the novel’s effect on Tres- sell’s intended contemporary readers. Still, in the months before World War I when the novel was published, there is some evidence from the reviews that even in its abridged form it achieved the kind of response Tressell desired. Fred Ball’s biography of Tressell includes a synopsis of some reviewers’ evaluations of the novel. Hey_flitheee claimed that "there is not one, no one at all, who will be, after reading it, quite the same man as he was before.” A reviewer from Herrerd wrote, "It bites, it leaves a perma- nent impression, it sears the mind. If we could get the clergy to start reading chapters out of this book each Sun- day morning, the Capitalist system would end in a month” (Ball 175). There is further evidence of the novel’s revo- lutionary use value. Peter Miles notes how its "readers have tended to associate their own interaction with the text 159 with the contexts in which they have encountered it and have been compelled to testify to such circumstances of the text’s reading, outside dominant cultural channels, as epi- tomizing the experience of the book" (5). In his introduction to the first paperback edition of the novel published in its entirety, Alan Sillitoe does just that. A wireless operator gave Sillitoe a copy of the abridged edition, telling him the "among other things it is the book that won the 1945 election for labour" (1). Today, the novel’s manuscript is carefully preserved in the London headquarters of the Trades Union Congress where it stands as a testament to the historical existence of the proletariat during a time of the consolidated capitalist monopolies that were able (in partnership with the state) to increasingly assert control over the marketplace and thus contain the workers. Ideas such as Marshall’s, powerful as they were at the beginning of the century, were able to be penetrated with an astonishing novel--the genre of the middle class--which expresses hope of the proletariat becom- ing conscious of the whole of which it is a part and con- structing an alternative hegemony. 160 LIST OF REFERENCES Altiok. Richard 0- Yieterian_£eeple_end_1deae- New York: Norton, 1973. Bakhtin. M. The_nielegie_1meginetien- Trans- Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P, 1981. Ball, FOCOO . . Treeeeil. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973. Beer. Max. 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